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Photo Copr. Edmcnston Studio, Washington, D. C.

Alice Paul.
Taken the Day Before She Went to Prison.

THE STORY OF
THE WOMAN'S PARTY

INEZ HAYNES IRWIN

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

NEW YORK

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPAN^

1921

TME qUINN a BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY. N J.

" But with such women consecrating their lives failure
is impossible."

Lait words spoken in public
hy Susan B. Anthont- —
her birthday, 1906.

" Most of those who worked with me in the early
years have gone. I am here for a little time only and
my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight
must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."

Susan B. Anthony.

TO THE INSPIEED, DEVOTED, UNTIEING, AND SELF-
SACEIFICING MEMBEES OF THE WOMAn's PAETY,
AND IN ESPECIAL TO THOSE WHOSE WOEK CANNOT
FOE LACK OF SPACE BE MENTIONED HEEE OE
WHOSE EFFOETS MAY NEVEE EVEN IN THE PU-
TUEE BE PEOPEELY APPEECIATED, THIS BOOK
IS ADMIEINGLY AND EEVEEENTLY DEDICATED.

CONTENTS

PART ONE
1913-1914

I. Intboduction ...

II. Alice PAtn, ,

III. Alice Paul and Lucy Buens

IV. F Stbeet and the Eably Days .
^ V. Making the Fedbbal Amendment an Issue
/VI. Fbebsubb on Congbess ....
^^11. Pbessuee on the Pbesident

yill. The Stbugole With the Rules Committee
JX. The Fibst Appeal to the Women Votebs
,^X. Congbess Takes up the Suffbaoe Amendment

page
3
6
14
18
31
49
57
66
73
87

PART TWO
1915-1916
_ I. The Woman Votebs Appeal to the Pbesident and to

Congbess

II. The New Headquabtebs and the Middle Yeabs
- III. The Conflict with the Jupiciaby Committee
" IV. MoBE Pbessube on the Pbesident ....
•^ V. Fobming the Woman's Pabty
" VI. Still Mobe Pbessube on the Pbesident
VII. The Second Appeal to the Women Votebs
VIII. Hail and Faeewell

99
123
130
144
149
164
172
183

II.
■III.

The
1.

PART THREE

1917

Pebpetual Delegation
The Pejaceful Picketing

2. The Peaceful Reception .

3. The Was on the Pickets

4. The Coubt and the Pickets

5. The Stbanoe Ladies
Telling the Countbt
Mobe Pbessube on Congbess

193
193
212
220
2S9
261
292
299

I. The New Headquabtebs and the Latis Yeabs 311

'^ II. Lobbying .... 317

III. Obganizino 327

^IV. The Fbesident Capitulates and the House Subbendebs 336

^ V. FiOHTiNO FOB Votes in the Senate 340

VI. BuENiNG THE Pbesident's Wobds 355

f VII. The Fbesident Appeals to the Senate to Pass the

Suffbage Amendment 366

t VIII. Picketing the Senate 372

IX. The Thibd Appeal to the Women Votebs . . 380

^ X. The Pbesident Includes Suffbage in His Campaign

fob Congbess 384

XI. BUBNING THE PBESIDBNT'S WoBDS AgAIN 386

XII. The Watch Fibes of Fbeedom . . . 391

^ XIII. The Appeal to the Pbesident on His Rbtubn . . 408

^ XrV. The Appeal to the Pbesident on His Depabtube 412

^ XV. The Pbesident Obtains the Last Vote and Congbess

Subbendebs 415

--XVI. Eatification 418

'XVII. The Last Days 464

Index 477

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Alice Paul . Frontiapieee

FACING
PAGE

Lucy Burns at the Head of the " Prison Specialists " . . 16
Why is the Girl from the West Getting all the Attention? Cartoon

hy Nina Allender . 78

The Suffragist's Dream. Cartoon by Nina Allender .... 146

Inez MilhoUand in the Washington Parade, March 3, 1913 . . 184
Joy Youn§ at the Inez Milholland Memorial Service . .188

Wage Earners Picketing the White House, February, 1917 . 200
The Thousand Pickets try vainly to Deliver Their Resolutions to

the President, March 4, 1917 204

A Thousand Pickets Marching Around the White House, March

4, 1917 204

Obeying Orders, Washington Police Arresting White House

Pickets Before the Treasury Building 256

The Patrol Wagon Waiting the Arrival of the Suffrage Pickets . 256
Burning the President's Words at the Lafayette Monument,

Washington 3S6

A Summer Picket Line . 356

Lucy Branham Burning the President's Words at the Lafayette

Monument ... 364

The Russian Envoy Banner, August, 1917 . 364

One of the Watchfires of Freedom 396

A Policeman Scatters the Watchflre 396

Suffragist Rebuilding the Fire Scattered by the Police . . . 398
The Last Suffragist Arrested. The Fire Burns On . . .398

The Oldest and the Youngest Pickets 448

The Flag Complete . 462

Every Good Suffragist the Morning after Ratification. Cartoon

hy Nina Allender 470

PART ONE

1913 and 1914

INTRODUCTION

In 1912 the situation in the United States in regard to the
enfranchisement of women was as follows:

Agitation for an amendment to the National Constitu-
tion had virtually ceased. Before the death of Susan B.
Anthony in 1906, Suffragists had turned their attention to
the States. Suffrage agitation there was persistent, vigor-
ous, and untiring; in Washington, it was merely perfunc-
tory. The National American Woman Suffrage Association
maintained a Congressional Committee in Washington, but
no Headquarters. This Committee arranged for one formal
hearing before the Senate and the House Committee of each
Congress. The speeches were used as propaganda mailed
on a Congressman's frank. The Suffrage Amendment had
never in the history of the country been brought to a vote
in the National House of Representatives, and had only
once, in 1887, been voted upon in the Senate. It had not
received a favorable report from the Committee in either
House since 1892 and had not received a report of any
kind since 1896. Suffrage had not been debated on the
floor of either House since 1887. In addition, the incoming
President, Woodrow Wilson, if not actually opposed to the
enfranchisement of women, gave no appearance of favoring
it; the great political Parties were against it. Political
leaders generally were unwilling to be connected with it.
Congress lacked — it is scarcely exaggeration to say — several
hundreds of the votes necessary to pass the Amendment.
Last of all the majority of Suffragists did not think the
Federal Amendment a practical possibility. They were
entirely engrossed in State campaigns.

On the other hand, the Suffrage movement, itself, was

4 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

virile and vital. The fourth generation of women to espouse
this cause were throwing themselves into the work with all
the power and force of their able, aroused, and emancipate
generation. The franchise had been granted in six States :
Wyomingj^Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California.
With the winning of Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912,
the movement assumed a new importance in the national
field. These victories meant that there were approximately
two million women-voters jn the United States, that one-
fifth of the Senate, one-seventh of the House and one-sixth
of the electoral vote came from Suffrage States.

It was in December, 1912, as Chairman of the Congress
sional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, that Alice Paul came to Washington.

In, the next eight years, this young woman was to bring
into existence a new political Party of fifty thousand mem-
bers. She was to raise over three-quarters of a million
dollars. She was to establish a Headquarters in Washington
that became the focus of the liberal forces of the country.
She was to gather into her organization hundreds of de-
voted workers ; some without pay and others with less pay
than they coidd command at other work or with other
organizations. She was to introduce into Suffrage agita-
tion in the United States a policy which, though not new
in the political arena, was new to Suffrage — ^the policy of
holding the Party in power responsible. She was to insti-
tute a Suffrage campaign so swift, so intensive, so com-
pelling— and at the same time so vairied, interesting, and
picturesque^ — that again and again it pushed the war-news
out of the preferred position on the front pages of the
newspapers of the United States. She was to see her Party
blaze a purple, white, and gold trail from the east to the
west of the United States; and from the north to the
south. She was to see the Susan B. Anthony Amendment
pass first the House and then the Stenate. She was to see
thirty-seven States ratify the Amendment in less than a

INTRODUCTION 5

year and a half thereafter. She was to see the President
of the United States move from a position of what seemed
definite opposition to the Suffrage cause to an open espousal
of it; move slowly at first but with a progress which
gradually accelerated until he, himself, obtained the last
Senatorial votef necessary to pass the Amendment.

What was the training which had developed in Alice Paul
this power and what were the qualities back of that train-
ing, which made it possible for her to invent so masterly a
plan, to pursue it so resistlessly?

ALICE PAUL

I watched a river of women.
Rippling purple, white and golden,
Stream toward the National Capitol.

Along its border.

Like a purple flower floating.

Moved a young woman, worn, wraithlike.

With eyes alight, keenly observing the marchers.

Out there on the curb, she looked so little, so lonely;

Few appeared even to see her;

No one saluted her.

Yet commander was she of the column, its leader;
She was the spring whence arose that irresistible

river of women
Streaming steadily towards the National Capitol.

Katherine Bolston Fisher,
' The Suffragist, January IP, 1918.

It is an interesting coincidence that the woman who bore ;
the greatest single part in the Suffrage fight at the begin-
ning— Susan Anthony — and the woman who bore the
greatest single part at the end — ^Alice Paul — ^were both
Quakers.

It is very difficult to get Alice Paul to talk about herself.
She is not much interested in herself and she is interested, i
with every atom of her, in the work she is doing. She will
tell you, if you ask her, that she was born in Moorestown,
New Jersey, and then her interest seems to die. She ap-
parently does not remember herself very clearly either as a
child or a young girl. That is not strange. So intently has
she worked in the last eight years and so intensely has she
lived in that work that each year seems to have erased its
predecessor. She is absolutely concentrated on nom. I

ALICE PAUL 7

asked Alice Paul once what converted her to Woman Suf-
frage. She said that she could not remember when she did
not believe in it. Shs added, " You know the Quakers have
always believed in Woman Suffrage."

Anne Herendeen, in a vivacious article on Alice Paul in
Everybody's Magazine for October, 1919, says, describing
a visit to Moorestown:

"What do you think of all these goings-on?" I asked her
mother. She sighed.

" Well, Mr. Paul always used to say, when there was any-
thing hard and disagreeable to be done, ' I bank on Alice.' "

The degree of education in Alice Paul's life and the
amount of social service which she had performed are a little
staggering in view of her youth. Just the list of the degrees
she achieved and the positions she held before she started
the National Woman's Party covers a typewritten page.
They have even an unexpected international quality. One
notes first — and without undue astonishment — that she ac-
quired a B.A. at Swarthmore in 1905; an M.A. at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1907; a Ph.D. at the same
university in 1912. This would seem enough to fill the
educational leisure of most young women, but it does not
by any means complete Alice Paul's student career. She
was a graduate of the New York School of Philanthropy in
1906. She was a student at the Woodbrooke Settlement for
Social Work at Woodbrooke, Birmingham, and in the Uni-
versity of Birmingham, England, in 1907-08; a graduate
student in sociology and economics in the School of Eco-
nomics of the University of London in 1908-09.

She was, in addition, a Resident Worker of. the New York
College Settlement in 1905-06 ; a Visitor for the New York
Charity Organization Society in the summer of 1906; a
Worker in the Summer Lane Settlement, and a Visitor in
the Charity Organization Society of Birmingham, England,
during the winter of 1907-08; Assistant-secretary to the
Pitlston Branch of the Charity Organization Society in

8 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

London for a half year in 1908; a Visitor for the Peel
Institute for Social Work at Clerkenwell, London, for a half
year in 1908-09 ; a Resident Worker for the Christian Social
Union Settlement of Hoxton, London, in the summer of
1908. She was also in charge of the Women's Department
of the branch of adult schools at Hoxton in the summer
of 1908.

I asked Mabel Vernon, who went to Swarthmore with
her, about Alice Paul. Her impressions were a little vague
— mainly of a normal, average young girl who had not yet
begun to " show." She remembered that, although biology
was her specialty, Miss Paul was catholic in her choice of
courses; how — as though it were something she expected to
need — she took a great deal of Latin; and that — as though
at the urge of the same intuition — she devoted herself to
athletics. She had apparently no athletic gifts ; yet before
she left Swarthmore she was on the girls' varsity basketball
team, was on her own class hockey team, and had taken
third place in the women's tennis tournament. She was a
rosy, rounded, vigorous-looking girl then. When Mabel
Vernon saw her next, she had been hunger-striking in Eng^
land and was thin to the point of emaciation.

I asked Alice Paul herself about her work with the poor
in England. She said, looking back on it — and it is ap-
parently always a great effort for her to remove her mental
vision from the present demand — ^that her main impression
was of the hopelessness of it all, that there seemed nothing
to do but sweep all that poverty away. The thing that she
remembers especially now is that they were always burying
children.

The first great, outstanding fact of Alice Paul's training
is that in the English interregnum which divided her Ameri-
can education, she joined the Pankhurst forces. In the
beginning all her work was of the passive kind. She attended
meetings and ushered. She was about to go home; indeed
she had bought her passage when the Pankhursts asked her
to join a deputation to Parliament. This deputation, which

ALICE PAUL 9

consisted of more than a hundred women, and was led by
Mrs. Pankhurst herself, was arrested at the entrance to
Parliament. They were detained in the policemen's billiard
room of the Cannon Row Police Station, the only place at
that station large enough to hold so many women.

The second great outstanding fact of Alice Paul's career
in England is that she met Lucy Burns.

Lucy Burns was born in Brooklyn. The facts of her
education, although superficially not so multitudinous as
those of Alice Paul, are even more impressive in point' of
international ,guality. She was graduated from Packer
Institute in 1899 and from Vassar College in 1902. She
studied at Yale University in 1902-03, at the University
of Berlin in 1906-08, at the University of Bonn in 1908-09.
She joined the Woman's Social and Political Union of
London in 1909 and she worked as an organizer in Edin-
burgh and the east of Scotland in 1909-12.

Lucy Burns thinks she first met Alice Paul at a Suffrage
demonstration. Alice Paul thinks she first met Lucy Burns
in that same policemen's billiard room of the Cannon Row
Police Station, London. Both these young women remember
their English experiences in flashes and pictures. They
worked too hard and too militantly to keep any written
record; and successive hardships wiped away all traces of
their predecessors. At any rate, Alice Paul says that she
spoke to Miss Burns because she noticed that she wore a
little American flag. Sitting on the billiard table, they
talked of home. Alice Paul also says that Lucy Bums, a
student at that time of the University of Bonn in Germany,
had come to England for a holiday. She entered the militant
movement a few weeks after she landed and this was her
first demonstration.

The women were held for trial, giving bail for their ap-
pearance. Alice Paul had engaged passage home, but she
had to cancel it as the trial did not occur until after the
date of her sailing. The case was appealed in the courts
and was finally dropped by the government.

10 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

iFrom this time on, the paths of the two girls kept cross-
ing. Frequently, indeed, they worked together. The next
time Alice Paul was arrested, however, Lucy Burns was not
with her. This was at Norwich. Winston Churchill, a mem-
ber of the cabinet, was holding a meeting. Outside, Alice
Paul spoke at a meeting too — a protest against the govern-
ment's stand on Woman Suifrage. On this occasion, she
was released without being tried. At the next Suffrage
demonstration — at Limehouse in London — ^both girls assisted.
On this occasion, Lloyd-George was holding a meeting.
Miss Paul and Miss Bums were arrested for trying to speak
at a protest-meeting outside, and were sentenced to two
weeks in Holloway Jail. They went on a hunger strike; but
were released after five days and a half.

After they recovered from this experience. Miss Paul and
Miss Bums motored to Scotland with Mrs. Pankhurst and
other English Suffragists, in order to assist with the Scot-
tish campaign. At Glasgow, the party organized a demon-
stration outside of a meeting held by Lord Crewe, a member
of the cabinet. Arrested, they were released without trial.
Proceeding northward. Miss Paul assisted in organizing the
Suffrage campaign in East Fife, the district of Prime Min-
ister Herbert Asquith. At Dundee, Miss Paul and Miss
Burns took part in a demonstration outside a meeting
held by Winston Churchill. The two American girls and
an English Suffragist were sentenced to ten days in Dundee
Prison. After four days of hunger strike, all were re-
leased. Each night during their imprisonment, great crowds
of citizens marched round the prison singing Scotch songs
as a means of showing their sympathy with the campaign.
Upon their release, the Suffragists were welcomed at a
mass-meeting over which the Lord Mayor presided. Thence
they went to Edinburgh where they assisted in organizing
a procession and pageant in Princess Street— one of the
most beautiful and famous thoroughfares of the world. The
pageant of the Scotch heroines who had made sacrifices
for liberty is still remembered in Scotland for its beauty.

ALICE PAUL 11

The next job was less agreeable. The two American girls
were sent to Berwick-on-Tweed to interrupt with a protest
a meeting of Sir Edward Grey, then Minister of Foreign
Affairs. Miss Paul made the interruption, was arrested, but
was released on the following day without going to trial.
Miss Burns was not arrested that time.

Next in Bermondsey, one of the slum districts of London,
they waged a plain, old-fashioned electoral campaign to de-
feat a candidate. When this was over, Miss Paul, in com-
pany with a Miss Brown, was sent to make a Suffrage protest
at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in the Guildhall. They were
arrested, of course, and were sentenced to thirty days in
Holloway Jail. They hunger struck, and were forcibly fed.
This experience left its mark on Miss Paul's health for
some time; it was several weeks after her release before she
was strong enough to travel. But in January, 1910, she
sailed for America — and arrived the pale, emaciated creature
who so shocked Mabel Vernon.

Lucy Bums tells an amusing story of Alice Paul's expe-
riences in England. Lord Crewe was to speak at a meeting
at Glasgow, and Alice Paul was delegated to represent the
Suffragists at that meeting and to heckle "the speaker. That
meant that she must conceal herself in the building, where
the meeting was to take place, the night before. The build-
ing was a big, high one — St. Andrew's Hall, the girls re-
member the name — and it was surrounded by a high, for-
midable iron fence. The night before Lucy Burns walked
with Alice Paul to the Hall and helped her to climb to the
top of this fence. Then Alice Paul jumped down into the
grounds and Lucy Burns left her there. There was some
building going on at this hall and with great difficulty Alice
Paul climbed the scaffolding to the high second story and
settled herself on a roof to spend the night. It rained all
night ; and of course she had no protection against the wet.
And after all this discomfort, when daylight broke, laborers
coming to work on a neighboring building observed the
strange phenomenon of a woman lying on a second-story

12 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

roof. They reported her and she was ignominously led down
and out.

In the summer of 1912, Lucy Burns returned to America.
Alice Paul visited her in Long Island. For some time now,
Alice Paul had been considering the Suffrage situation of
the United States in its national aspect. Here, she broached
to Lucy Burns her idea of working for a Constitutional
Amendment in Washington — ^her belief that with six States
enfranchised — ^with six States that could be used as a
lever on Congress — ^the time had come when further work
in State campaigns was sheer waste. More even than
English conditions, American conditions favored the policy
of holding the Party in power responsible in regard to Suf-
frage. In England, there was no body of women completely
enfranchised. In America there were approximately two
million women voters who, completely enfranchised, could
command a hearing from the politicians. She felt that such
a campaign in America would be more productive of result
for still another reason. In pursuing that policy in Eng-
land, the Suffragists were often placed in the embarrassing
position of defeating Suffragists and putting in anti-Suf-
fragists. But in America, no matter what Party was in
power, only Suffrage senators and representatives could be
elected from the Suffrage States. In other words, if, in
defeating the Party in power they defeated Suffragists — as
was inevitable in the Suffrage States — other Suffragists as
inevitably took their places. Moreover, there was no imme-
diate motive urging senators and representatives from the
Suffrage States — although often they were individually
helpful — to convert senators and representatives of their
own Party from non-Suffrage States. Were their Party in
jeopardy at home, however, that motive was instantly sup-
plied. Also, Alice Paul thought that it was more dignified
of women to ask the vote of other women than to beg it
of men.

Alice Paul was the first to apply this policy to the Suf-
frage situation in the United States. As late as 1917, other

ALICE PAUL 13

Suffrage leaders, as well as members of Congress, were re-
iterating that there was no such thing as a Party in power
in the United States, that that idea was brought from Eng-
land by Alice Paul and was not adapted to our American
institutions.

The two girls concocted a scheme for starting federal
work in Washington. They went with it to tho National
American Woman Suffrage Association, to Anna Howard
Shaw, to Harriot Stanton Blatch, to Mary Ware Dennett.
Lucy Burns pictures Alice Paul at that last interview —
" a little Quakerish figure, crumpled up in her chair and
for the first time I noticed how beautiful her eyes were."
Finally Alice Paul went to the Convention of the National
American Association at Philadelphia. She talked with
Jane Addams. Alice Paul suggested that she be allowed
to come to Washington at her own expense to begin work
on Congress for the passing of a Constitutional Amendment.
She agreed to raise the necessary money. Jane Addams
brought this suggestion before the Board of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association, urged its accept-
ance. It was approved. The Board appointed a Com-
mittee consisting of Alice Paul, Chairman; Lucy Burns,
Vice-chairman ; Crystal Eastman. Later in Washington, Mrs.
Lawrence Lewis and Mary Beard joined that Committee.
Alice Paul went first to Philadelphia and collected money
for a few days. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, who, Miss Paul says,
was one of the first- to say, " I have always believed that
the way to get Suffrage is by a federal amendment," gave
her name; gave money; collected money.

And so — all alone — ^Alice Paul came to Washington.

ALICE PAUL AND LUCY BURNS

Alice Paul is a slender, frail-looking young woman, deli-
cately colored and delicately made. The head, the neck, the
long slim arms, and the little hands look as though they
were cut out of alabaster. The dense shadowy hair, scoop-
ing with deeper accessions of shadow into great waves, dip-
ping low on her forehead and massing into a great dusky
bunch in her neck, might be carved from bronze. It looks
too heavy for her head. Her face has a kind of powerful
irregularity. Its prevailing expression is of a brooding
stillness; yet when she smiles, dimples appear. Her eyes
are big and quiet; dark — ^like moss-agates. When she is
silent they are almost opaque. When she talks they light
up — rather they glow — in a notable degree of luminosity.
Her voice is low; musical; it pulsates with a kind of inter-
rogative plaintiveness. When you ask her a question, there
ensues, on her part, a moment of a stillness so profound,
you can ajlmost hear it. I think I have never seen anybody
who can keep so still as Alice Paul. But when she answers
you, the lucidity of exposition, the directness of expression !
Always she looks you straight in the eye, and when she has
finished speaking she holds you with that luminous glow.
Her tiny hands make gestures, almost humorous in their
gentleness and futility, compared with the force of her
remarks.

In the endless discussions at Headquarters — discussions
that consider every subject on earth and change constantly
in personnel and point of view — she is always the most
silent. But when at last she speaks, often there ensues a
pause; she has summed it all up. Superficially she seems
cold, austere, a little remote. But that is only because the

ALICE PAUL AND LUCY BURNS 16

fire of her spirit bums at such a heat that it is still and
white. She has the quiet of the spinning top.

As for her mentality . . . her capacity for leadership
. . . her vision. . . . There is no difference of opinion
in regard to Alice Paul in the Woman's Party. With one
accord, they say, " She is the Party." They regard her
with an admiration which verges on awe. Mentally she
walks apart; not because she has any conscious sense of
superiority, but because of the swiftness, amplitude, and
completeness with which her mind marches — her marvelous
powers of concentration and her blazing devotion to the
work.

I think no better description can be given of her than
to quote the exact phrases which her associates use in talk-
ing of her. Winifred Mallon speaks of her " biirning sin-
cerity." Helena Hill Weed imputes a " prescience " to her.
Anne Martin says, " She is the heart, brain, and soul of
the Woman's Party," and " Her mind moves with the pre-
cision of a beautiful machine." Nina Allender sums her up
as " a Napoleon without self-indulgence." She said that
when at the hearing in 1916, Congressmen tried to tangle
Alice Paul they found it an impossibility; everything in
Alice Paul's mentality was so clear; there was nothing to
tangle. She added, " There are no two minds to Alice Paul."
" My, mother describes her," she concluded, " as a flame
undyingly burning."

This is Maud Younger's tribute:

She has in the first place a devotion to the cause whicti is
absolutely self-sacrificing. She has an indomitable will. She
recognizes no obstacles. She has a clear, penetrating, analytic
mind which cleaves straight to the heart of things. In examining
a situation, she always bares the main fact; she sees all the
forces which make for change in that situation. She is a genius
for organization, both in the mass and in detail. She under-
stands perfectly, in achieving the big object, the cumulative
effect of multitudes of small actions and small services. She
makes use of all material, whether human or otherwise, that
comes along. Her work has perpetual growth; it never stag-

16 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

nates; it is always branching out. She is never hampered or
cluttered. She is free of the past. Her inventiveness and re-
sourcefulness are endless. She' believes absolutely in open
diplomacy. She believes that everything should be told; our
main argument with her was in regard to the necessity for
secrecy in special cases. She is almost without suspicion; and
sometimes with a too-great tendency towards kind judgment in
the case of the individual. It seems incredible that with all these
purely intellectual gifts, she should possess an acute appreciation
of beauty; a gift for pageantry; an amazing sense of humor.

Lucy Burns says:

When Alice Paul spoke to me about the federal work, I
knew that she had an extraordinary mind, extraordinary courage
and remarkable executive ability. But I felt she had two disa-
bilities— ill-health and a lack of knowledge of human nature. I
was wrong in both. I was staggered by her speed and industry
and the way she could raise money. Her great assets, I should
say^ are her power, with a single leap of the imagination, to
make plans on a national scale; and a supplementary power to
see that done down to the last postage stamp. But because she
can do all this, people let her do it — often she has to carry her
own plans out down to the very last postage stamp. She used
all kinds of people; she tested them through results. She is
exceedingly charitable in her judgments of people and patient.
She assigned one inept person to five different kinds of work
before she gave her up. Her iabruptness lost some workers, but
not the finer spirits. The very absence of anything like personal
appeal seemed to help her.

Lucy Burns is as different a type from Alice Paul as one
could imagine. She is tall — or at least she seems tall;
rounded and muscular; a splendidly vigorous physical
specimen. If Alice Paul looks as though she were a Tanagra
carved from alabaster, Lucy Bums seems like a figure,
heroically sculptured, from marble. She is blue-eyed and
f resh-complexioned ; dimpled ; and her head is burdened, even
as Alice Paul's, by an enormous weight of hair. Lucy
Burn's hair is a brilliant red; and even as she flashes, it
flashes. It is full of sparkle. She is a woman of twofold
ability. She speaks and writes with equal eloquence and

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

Lucy Burns at the Head of the " Prison Specialists."

These Women, All of Whom Served Terms in Jail, Are Wearing
a Reproduction of Their Prison Garb.

ALICE PAUL AND LUCY BURNS 17

elegance. Her speeches before Suffrage bodies, her editorials
in the Suffragist are models of clearness ; conciseness ; of
accumulative force of expression. Mentally and emotion-
ally, she is quick and warm. Her convictions are all
vigorous and I do not think Lucy Burns would hesitate for
a moment to suffer torture, to die, for them. She has in-
tellectuality of a high order; but she overruns with a win-
ning Irishness which supplements that Intellectuality with
grace and charm; a social mobility of extreme sensitiveness
and swiftness. In those early days in Washington, with all
her uncompromising militantism, Lucy Bums was the
diplomat of the pair; the tactful, placating force.

I asked a member of the Woman's Party who had watched
the work from the beginning what was the difference between
the two women. She answered, " They are both political-
minded. They seemed in those early days to have one spirit
and one brain. Both saw the situation exactly as it was,
but they went at the problem with different methods. Alice
Paul had a more acute sense of justice, Lucy Burns, a more
bitter sense of injustice. Lucy Bums would become angry
because the President or the people did not do this or that.
Alice Paul never expected anything of them."

Both these women had the highest kind of courage. Lucy
Bums — although she admits that at Occoquan Workhouse,
she suffered from nameless terrors — ^has a mental poise that
is almost unsusceptible to fear. Alice Paul — although she
can with perfect composure endure arrest, imprisonment,
hunger-striking — acknowledges timidities. She does not like
to listen to horrors of any description, especially ghost-
stories. They say though that, in the movies, she always
particularly enjoyed pirates.

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS

When Alice Paul arrived in Washington in December, 1912,
she found a discouraging state of things. She had been
given the address of Headquarters, but Headquarters had
vanished. She had been given a list of people to whom she
could turn for help, but most of them had died or moved
away. At that time, Mrs. William Kent, who was subse-
quently to become one bf her constant and able assistants,
was Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the Na-
tional American Woman Suffrage Association. Two years
before, when her husband was elected to Congress, Mrs. Kent
came to Washington. When she was asked to become Chair-
man of this Committee she was told that it would entail
no work. She must merely see that the bill was introduced
and arrange hearings before the two committees. There
was no thought of putting the Amendment through, and no
lobbying for it. The National Association allowed Mrs.
Keni ten dollars. At the end of the year she returned
change. There were a few Suffrage clubs in Washington,
but their activity was merely social. Alice Paul saw that
the work had to be started from the very beginning. First
of all they had to have Headquarters. She hired a little
biasement room at 1420 F Street. At a formal opening on
January 2, 1913, Mrs. William Kent, presiding, intro-
duced Alice Paul as her successor; and a plan for federal
work was laid before the Suffragists of the District of
Columbia. Of course no one at the meeting guessed that
she was present at a historic occasion.

Alice Paul began work at once. Nina AUender says that
one Sunday a stranger called. She was wearing " a slim

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 19

dress and a little purple hat and she was no bigger," Mrs.
Allender held up her forefinger, " than that." The call was
brief and it was unaccompanied by any of the small talk
or the persiflage which distinguishes most social occasions.
But when the door closed, a few moments later, mother and
daughter looked at each other in amazement. Mrs. Evans
had promised to contribute to SuiFrage a sum of money
monthly. Mrs. Allender had promised to contribute to Suf-
frage a sum of money monthly. Mrs. Evans had agreed to
do a certain amount of work monthly. Mrs. Allender had i
agreed to do a certain amount of work monthly. Their
amazement arose partly from the fact that they had not
been begged, urged, or argued with — they had simply been
asked; and partly from the fact that, before the arrival of
this slim little stranger, they had no more idea of contribut-
ing so much money or work than of flying. But they agreed
to it the instant she requested it of them.

This is a perfect example of the way Alice Paul works.
There may be times when she urges, even begs; but they
appear to be rare. She often forgets to thank you when
you say yes; for she has apparently assumed that you will
say yes. She does not argue with you when you say no —
but you rarely say no. She has only to ask apparently. Per-
haps it is part the terseness with which she puts her request.
Perhaps it is part her simple acceptance of the fact that
you are not going to refuse. Perhaps it is her expectation
that you will understand that she is not asking for herself
but for Suffrage. Perhaps it is the Quaker integrity which
shines through every statement. Perhaps it is the intensity
of devotion which blazes back of the gentleness of her per-
sonality and the inflexibility of purpose which gives that
gentleness power. At any rate, it is very difficult to refuse
Alice Paul.

A member of the Woman's Party, meeting her for the first
time in New York and riding for a short distance in a taxi-
cab with her, says that Alice Paul turned to her as soon as
they were alone:

20 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

"Will you give a thousand dollars to the Womaa's
Party? "

" No, I haven't that amount to give."

" Will you give one hundred dollars ? "

« No."

" Will you give twenty-five dollars .'' "

" No."

"Will you "

" I'll give five dollars."

Mrs. Gilson Gardner says that one day, in the midst of
the final preparations for the procession of March 3, she
came to Headquarters. Alice Paul, it was apparent, was in
a state of considerable perturbation. At the sight of Mrs.
Gardner she said, " There's Mrs. Gardner ! She'll attend to
it." She went on to explain. " The trappings for the
horses have been ruined. Will you order some more? They
must be delivered tomorrow night." Mrs. Gardner says that
she had no more idea how to order a trapping than a sus-
pension bridge, but — magic-ed as always by Alice Paul's
personality — she emitted a terrified " Yes," and started out.
She walked round and round the block a dozen times, re-
viewing her problem, and casting about her looks of an
appalled desperation. Suddenly she espied a little tailor
shop, and in it, at work, a little tailor. She approached
and confided her problem to him. Mrs. Gardner kept shop
while he went to Headquarters and got the measurements.
He delivered the trappings on time.

Later in the history of the Woman's Party, Margery
Ross came to Washington to spend the winter with a cousin.

She was young and pretty. She established herself there
and began to enjoy herself. She was a Suffragist. One day,
out of a clear sky, Alice Paul said : " Miss Ross, will you go
to Wyoming on Saturday, and organize a State Convention
there within three weeks?" "Why, Miss Paul," the girl
faltered, " I can't. My plans are all made for the winter.
I've only just got here." Nevertheless, in a few days, Miss
Ross started for Wyoming. There were only eight members
of the Congressional Union in that State, and yet three

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 21

weeks later she had achieved a State Convention with one
hundred and twenty delegates.

Perhaps, however, the story which best illustrates Miss
Paul's power to make people work is one of Nina AUender's.
One must remember that Mrs. AUender is an artist. One day
Alice Paul telephoned her to ask her if she would go the
next day to Ohio to campaign for the Woman's Party. Mrs.
AUender, who had no more expectation of going to Ohio
than to the moon, replied : " I'm sorry. It's impossible.
You see, we have just moved. The place is being papered
and painted, and I've got to select the wallpaper." " Oh,
that's all right," Alice Paul suggested. " I'll send a girl
right up there. She'U pick your paper for you and see that
if 8 put on." In the end, of course, Mrs. AUender chose
her own paper. But although she did not go to Ohio the
next day, she went within a week.

When Alice Paul asked Maud Younger to deliver the
memorial address on Inez MilhoUand, Miss Younger was at
first staggered by the idea. " I can't," she said. " I don't
know how to do it."

" Oh," directed Alice Paul in a degagi way, " just write
something like Lincoln's Gettysbwrg address."

The first Headquarters consisted of one long basement
room, partitioned at the back into three small rooms of
which two were storerooms, and one Miss Paul's office. This
opened into a court. Later when the Suffragist was pub-
lished, they had rooms upstairs; sometimes one, sometimes
more, according to their ^unds. By the first anniversary,
they had expanded to ten rooms. Later stiU, they had two
whole floors.

Almost all the work was done by volunteers. AU kinds of
people worked for them. Comparatively idle women of the
moneyed class gave up matinees, teas, and other social occa-
sions; stenographers, who worked all day long, labored
until midnight. Anybody who dropped into Headquarters
for any purpose was put to work. Once a distinguished
lawyer from a western city called on business with Alice
Paul.

22 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

"Would you mind addressing a few envelopes?" asked
Alice Paul when the business was concluded. The distin-
guished lawyer, whose own office was of course manned by a
small army of stenographers, smiled; but he took off his
coat and went to work.

Alice Paul's swift, decisive leadership was accepted, un-
questioningly. Her word was immutable. One day an
elderly woman was observed at a typewriter, painfully pick-
ing at it with a stiff forefinger. It was obvious that with
a great expenditure of time and energy, she was accom-
plishing nothing.

" Why are you doing that.? " somebody asked curiously.

"Because Alice Paul told me to," was the plaintive
answer.

Most of the work was done in the big front room. The
confusion of going and coming of the volunteer workers;
the noise of conflicting activity; conversation; telephones;
made concentrated thinking almost impossible. The police-
man on the beat said that a light burned in Headquarters
all night long. That was true. Alice Paul and Lucy Bums
used to work far into the morning because then, alone, were
they assured of quiet. There were times though when Alice
Paul worked all day, all night and sitting up in bed, into the
next morning. She never lost time. Later when she picketed
the White House, she used to take a stenographer with her
and dictate while on picket duty.

Volunteer work is of course not always to be depended
upon. It is eccentric and follows its own laws. There would
be periods when Headquarters would be flooded with help.
There came intervals when it was almost empty. Sara
Grogan, herself a devoted adherent, tells how in this case,
she used to go out on the streets and ask strangers to help.
Volunteer workers — ^if they were housekeepers or the mothers
of families — ^learned, on their busy days, to give F Street
a wide berth. As they had no time to give and as it was
impossible to say no to Alice Paul, the streets about Head-
quarters were as closed to them as the streets of his creditors

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 23

to Dick Swiveller. It was perhaps this experience which
taught Alice Paul what later became one of her chief assets
— her power to put to use every bit of human material that
came her way ; which developed in her that charitable will-
ingness, when this human material failed in one direction,
to try it in another ; and another ; and another. Rarely did
she reject any offer of help, no matter how untrained or
seemingly untrainable it was. I asked Mabel Vernon how
she got so much work — and such splendid work of all kinds
— out of amateurs. She answered, " She believed we could
do it and so she made us believe it."

In those days, Alice Paul herself was like one driven by
a fury of speed. She was a human dynamo. She made
everybody else work as hard as possible, but she drove —
although she did drive — ^nobody so hard as herself. Winifred
Mallon said, " I worked with Alice Paul for three months
before I saw her with her hat off. I was perfectly aston-
ished, I remember, at that mass of hair. I had never sus-
pected its existence." For a long time, Alice Paul deliber-
ately lived in a cold room, so that she could not be tempted
to sit up late to read. It was more than a year before she
visited the book-shop opened by a friend because, she said,
" I should be tempted to buy so many books there," Anne
Martin says that she believes Alice Paul made a vow not to
think or to read anything that was not connected with Suf-
frage until the Amendment was passed. There was certainly
BO evidence of her reading anything else. They make the
humorous observation at Headquarters now that the instant
the Amendment had passed both Houses, Alice Paul began
to permit herself the luxury of one mental relaxation — ^the
reading of detective stories. But in those early days she
worked all the time and she worked at everything. Some-
body said to Lucy Burns, " She asks nothing of us that
she doesn't do herself," and Lucy Burns answered dryly,
"Yes, she's annoyingly versatile."

Not only did Alice Paul ask you to work but after you
had agreed to it, she kept after you. " She * nagged ' us "

24 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

— they say humorously at Headquarters. Once, just before
leaving for Chicago, Alice Paul appointed a certain young
person chairman of a certain comittittee, with power to select
chairmen of ten other committees to arrange for a demon-
stration when the Suffrage Special returned. This was four
weeks off and yet in three days from Chicago came a tele-
gram : " Wire me immediately the names of your chairmen ! "

But just as Alice Paul never thanked herself for w\hat she
was doing, it never occurred to her to thank anybody else.
And .perhaps she had an innate conviction that it was
egregious personally to thank people for devotion to a cause.
However that did not always work out in practice, naturally.

Once a woman, a volunteer, who had worked all the morn-
ing reported to Alice Paul at noon. She retailed what she
had done. Alice Paul made no comment whatever, but asked
her immediately if she would go downtown for her. The
woman refused; went away and did not come back. Alice
Paul asked a friend for an explanation of her absence.
" She is offended," her friend explained. " You did not thank
her for what she did." " But," exclaimed Alice Paul, " she
did not do it for me. She did it for Suffrage. I thought
she would be delighted to do it for Suffrage." After that,
however, Alice Paul tried very hard to remember to thank
everybody. Once a party member said to her, as she was
leaving Headquarters, "I have a taxi here. Miss Paul —
can't I take you anywhere.?" "No," Alice Paul answered
abruptly. She was halfway down the stairs when she seemed
to remember something. Instantly she turned back and said,
" Thank you ! " Another time, somebody else announced
that she was offended because Alice Paul had not thanked
her, and was going to leave. A friend went to Alice Paul.

" Mrs. Blank is leaving us. I am afraid you have offended
her."

" Where is she." " Alice Paul demanded, " I will apologize
at once."

"For what?" the friend inquired.

" I don't know," Alice Paul answered, " anything! "

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 25

Like Roosevelt, Alice Paul had a remarkable news sense.
She was the joy of newspaper men. Ninety per cent of the
Woman's Party bulletins got publicity as against about
twenty per cent of others. A New Orleans editor said they
were the best publicity organization in the country. Gilson
Gardner compares her to a Belasco, staging the scene ad-
mirably but, herself, always in the background.

Later, when the first stress was over, her companions
spoke of the joy of work with her. They marveled at that
creative quality which made her put over her demonstrations
on so enormous a scale and the beauty with which she inun-
dated them.

Maud Younger tells of going with her one night to the
Capitol steps, when she painted imaginatively, on the scene
which lay outstretched before her, the great demonstration
which she was planning: wide areas of static color here, long
lines of pulsating color there, laid on in great splashes and
welts, like a painter of the modem school. Above all,
her companions took a fearful joy in the serene way in
which she brushed aside red tape, ignored rules. She would
decide on some unexpected, daring bit of pioneer demon-
stration. Her companions would report to her retarding
restrictions. " What an absurd rule," she would remark,
and then proceed calmly to ignore it. " Oh, Miss Paul,
we can't do that ! " was the commonest exclamation with
which the fellow workers greeted her plans. But always
they did do it because she convinced them that it could be
done. After the death of Inez MilhoUand, Alice Paul de-
cided to hold a memorial service in Statuary Hall at the
Capitol.

" Oh, Miss Paul, we can't do that ! Memorial services are
held there only for those whose statues are in the Hall."
But in the end she did it. When her Committee spoke about
it to the officials who have Statuary Hall in charge they
said, " One thing we cannot permit. You cannot go up into
the gallery because the doors open from that gallery into
rooms containing old and valued books and those books

26 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

might be stolen." The police said, " No, you must not hang
curtains over those openings in case a Senator wants to
pass through." Later the police themselves were helping
Alice Paul to place the purple, white, and gold pennants
about the gallery ; they themselves were piling around their
standards, in order to hold them straight, those same old
and valued books; they themselves were standing on step-
ladders to help her hang curtains before those unsealable
openings.

When the Suffrage Special returned, Alice Paul decided
to hold a welcoming banquet in the dining-room of the beau-
tiful new Washington railroad station. She sent somebody
to ask this privilege of the authorities. At first, of course,
they said, no, but in the end, of course, they said, yes.
The Woman's Party hired a band to help in the welcome.
Alice Paul observed that the man who played the horn
was so tall that he obscured an important detail in the
decoration. She asked him to stand in another part of
the band group. Of course he answered that that was im-
possible, that the horn always stood where he was standing,
but in the end, of course, he stood where Alice Paul told
him to stand.

Late in the history of the Woman's Party, somebody dis-
covered that Alice Paul had never seen an anti-Suffragist.
At a legislative hearing during ratification they pointed out
one to her — a beautiful one. " She looks like a Botticelli,"
Alice Paul said — and gazed admiringly at her for the rest
of the hearing.

Her companions marveled, I reiterate, at Alice Paul's
creative power. That did not manifest itself in demonstra-
tions alone. Her policy had creative quality. It had a wide
sweep. It moved on wings and with accumulating force and
speed. Her work in Washington started slowly, though
with sureness of attack, but all the time it heightened and
deepened. From 1913 to 1919 it never faltered. Sometimes
changes in outside affairs made changes in her self-evolved
plan, but they never stopped it, never even slowed it. From

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 27

the beginning she saw her objective clearly; and always she
made for it. Activities that may often have seemed to the
callow-minded but the futile militancy of a group of fanatics
were part of a perfectly co-ordinated plan. Moreover, she
had always reserve ideas and always a buried ace. Sapient
members of the Party — ^those who were close to her — ^believe
that she used only a part of an enormous scheme; that she
was prepared far into the future and for any possible con-
tingency. They wonder sometimes how far that creative
impulse reached . . . what form it would later . . . and
later . . . and later have taken. Yet she proceeded
slowly, giving every new form of agitation its chance; pru-
dent always of her reserves. The instant one kind of
demonstration exhausted its usefulness, she moved to the
next. She wasted no time on side issues, on petty hostilities,
on rivalries with other organizations.

But the quality that, above all, informed her other
qualities, the quality that she first of all brought to the
Suffrage situation, the quality that made her associates re-
gard her with a kind of awe, was her political-mindedness,
and political-mindedness was not at all uncommon in the
Woman's Party. It was, perhaps, its main asset, although
initiative and efficiency, speed, and courage of the most dar-
ing order marked it. But Alice Paul's political minded-
ness had quality as well as quantity. When Hughes was
made the Republican nominee for the 1916 election, Alice
Paul asked him to declare for National Suffrage. He was
exceedingly dubious. It is obvious f;hat, in asking favors
of a politician, it is necessary to prove to him that action
on his part will not hurt him in the matter of votes and
may help him. On this point, Alice Paul said in effect :

" Your Party consists of two factions, the old, standpat
Republicans and the Progressives. Now, if you put a Suf-
frage plank in your platform, you will not alienate the Pro-
gressives, because the Progressives have a Suffrage plank,
and the old standpat Republicans will not vote for a Demo-
crat no matter what you put in your platform."

28 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

When in the same election campaign Hughes went West,
and the West turned to Wilson, it became evident, however
much the Woman's' Party diminished the prestige of Wilson,
it could not defeat him. Numerous advisers suggested to
Alice Paul to withdraw her speakers from the campaign.

Alice Paul answered, " No; if we withdraw our speaker g
from fhe campaign, we withdraw the issue from the camr
paign. The main thing is to make the Suffrage Amendment
a national issue that the Democrats will not want to meet
in another campaign."

After the election, somebody said to her, " The people
of the United States generally think you made a great
mistake in fighting Wilson. They think your campaign a
failure." Alice Paul answered, " In this case, it is not
important what the people think but what the Democratic
leaders hnow."

The most magical thing about Alice Paul's political-
mindedness was, however, a quality which is almost inde-
scribable. Perhaps it should be symbolized by some term of
the fourth dimension — although Helena HUl Weed's happy
word " prescience " comes near to describing it. Maud
Younger gives an extraordinary example of this. She says
again and again, lobbyists would come back from the
Capitol with the news of some unexpected manoeuver which
perplexed or even blocked them. Congressmen, themselves,
would be puzzled over the situation. Again and again, she
has seen Alice Paul walk to the window, stand there, head
bent, thinking. Then, suddenly she would come back. She
had seen behind the veil of conflicting and seemingly un-
translatable testimony. She had, in Maud Younger's own
words, cloven " straight to the heart of things." Often her
lobbyists hail the experience of explaining to baffled mem-
bers of Committees in Congress the concealed tactics of their
own Committee.

It was small wonder that they were so busy at Head-
quarters during those first months. They were preparing

F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 29

for a monster demonstration in the shape of a procession
which was to occur on March 3, 1913, on the eve of Presi-
dent Wilson's first inauguration. That procession, which
was really a thing of great beauty, brought Suffrage into
prominence in a way the Suffragists had not for an instant
anticipated. About eight thousand women took part. The
procession started from the Capitol, marched up Pennsyl-
vania Avenue past the White House and ended in a mass-
meeting at the Hall of the Daughters of the American Revo-
lution. Although a permit had been issued for the proces-
sion, and though this carried with it the right to the street,
the police failed to protect the marchers as had been rumored
they would. The end of the Avenue was almost impassable
to the parade. A huge crowd, drawn from all over the
country, had appeared in Washington for the Inauguration
festivities. They chose to act in the most rowdy manner
possible and many of the police chose to seem oblivious of
what they were doing. Disgraceful episodes occurred.
Secretary of War Stimson had finally to send for troops
from Fort Meyer. There was an investigation of the action
of the police by a Committee of the Senate. The official
report is a thick book containing testimony that will shock
any fine-minded American citizen. Ultimatdy, the Chief of
Police for the District of Columbia was removed.

The investigation, however, kept the Suffrage procession
in the minds of the public for many weeks. It almost over-
shadowed the Inauguration itself.

On this occasion, the banner — in a slightly modifiedx form
to be afterwards always known as the Great Demand
banner — was carried for the first time. This banner marched
peremptorily through the history of the Woman's Party
until the Suffrage Amendment was passed. It said:

WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITTTTION OF THE
UNITED STATES ENEKANCHISING THE WOMEN OP THE COUNTEY.

30 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

On March 3 there arrived in Washington a man who
was that day a simple citizen of the United States. The
next day he was to become the President of the United
States. As Woodrow Wilson drove from the station through
the empty streets to his hotel, he asked, " Where are the
people.'' "

The answer was, " Over on the Avenue watching the Suf-
frage Parade."

MAKING THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE

The first great demonstration of the Congressional Com-
mittee— the procession of March 3 — had been designed to
attract the eye of the country to the Suffragists. It suc-
ceeded beyond their wildest hopes. Thereafter it became a
part of the policy of the Congressional Committee — later,
the Congressional Union, and later still, the (National
Woman's Party — to keep the people watching the Suffra-
gists. The main work of the Congressional Committee, how-
ever, focussed directly on Congress, as of course Congress
alone could pass a Constitutional Amendment. They ap-
pealed to Congress constantly, by different methods, and
through different avenues. They appealed to Congress
through the President of the United States, through political
leaders, through constituents. It is one way of describing
their system to say that they worked on Congress by a series
of electric shocks delivered to it downwards from the Presi-
dent, and by a constant succession of waves delivered up-
wards through the people. This pressure never ceased for
a moment. It accumulated in power as the six years of
this work went on.

When President Wilson arrived in Washington for his
inauguration, the first thing brought to his notice was Suf-
frage agitation. The Congressional Committee thereafter
kept Suffrage constantly before him. If not actually op-
posed to Suffrage in 1913, Woodrow Wilson had every
appearance of opposition; certainly he was utterly indif-
ferent to it. But Alice Paul believed that he was amenable
to education on the subject, and she proceeded to educate
him. Her theory proved to be true, but the process took

32 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

longer than she had anticipated. Her methods of course
aroused storms of criticism ; but in the end they triumphed.
The President's action during the six years' siege was the
attitude of all politicians. That is to say, for a long time
he made general statements of a vaguely encouraging nature
to the SuiFragists, but for a long time he actually did noth-
ing. Every accepted method of convincing him of the jus-
tice of the cause was tried. Deputation after deputation
waited on him and stated their case. Then he began to
move. He came out for Woman Suffrage as a principle;
he voted for it in New Jersey but he still believed that the
enfranchisement of woman must come by States. In 1917,
his position, except for these minor admissions, was exactly
that of 1913. As far as the Suff'rage Amendment was con-
cerned, he had not budged an inch. The Woman's Party
then tried desperate remedies and afterward more and more
desperate remedies. These always produced results — ^to-
wards the end, hmnediate results. But at the beginning of
this period, the Suffragists found that the instant they
relaxed, the President relaxed ; his attention departed from
Suffrage. This always happened. Then the Congressional
Committee began to exert a little more pressure, and the
President's attention came back to Suffrage. In the long
attacking process to which Alice Paul subjected him, she
put him in untenable position after untenable position. He
moved from each one of them by some new concession. In
the end, he himself procured the last vote necessary to pass
the Amendment in the Senate.

Alice Paul admires Woodrow Wilson profoundly. She
admires his powers of leadership ; his ideals ; his persistence ;
his steadfastness ; his resolution. " He is a man," she says,
"who considers one thing at a time. Suffrage was not in
his thought at all until we, ourselves, injected it there. And
it was not in the center of his thought until the picketing
was well along." She believed always that, when the Presi-
dent was made to think that he must act in regard to Suf-
frage, he would put it through.

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 33

Immediatdy after his inauguration, President Wilson
announced that a special session of Congress would be called
on April 7. At once the Congressional Committee decided
to bring to his attention the fact that there was no subject
which more urgently demanded treatment in this session than
Woman Suffrage. Three deputations were therefore organ-
ized to ask him to recommend the Federal Amendment in the
message by which he should convene this special session.
These deputations — and all subsequent ones — ^were organized
by Alice Paul.

The first deputation waited on President Wilson on March
17. This deputation consisting of four women was led by
Alice Paul herself. Although individual Suffragists had
interviewed previous presidents, this was the first deputation
which had ever appeared with a request for action before a
President of the United States. President Wilson's reply
to their remarks was that the subject would receive his most
careful attention.

The episode was one of the most amusing of the early
history of the Congressional Committee. The President re-
ceived the deputation in the White House offices. When they
entered, they found four chairs arranged in a row with one
in front of them, like a class about to be addressed by a
teacher. The atmosphere was so tense that all the women
felt it and were frightened. Alice Paul spoke first and said
that women wanted Suffrage considered by Congress at once,
as the most important issue before the country. All spoke
in turn. One woman was so terrified that she petrified
when her turn came. " Don't be nervous," the President
reassured her and she finally proceeded. To this first group
the President made the statement that so astounded Suf-
fragists all over the country — that Suffrage had never been
brought to his attention, that the matter was entirely new.
He added that he did not know his position and would like
all information possible on the subject.

The Congressional Committee gave him time to give the
subject this careful attention, and then a second deputation

34 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

waited on the President on March 28 to furnish him with
the information he lacked. This deputation was led by
Elsie Hill, and it represented the College Equal Suffrage
League. The President replied to their remarks that this
session of Congress would be so occupied with the tariff and
the currency that the Suffrage measure could not be con-
sidered.

A third deputation waited on the President on March 31.
It was led by Dr. Cora Smith King, and it was composed of
influential members of the National Council of Women
Voters. This delegation told the President that the women
voters, who numbered approximately two million, were much
interested in the proposed Suffrage Amendment. They also
asked him to recommend it in his message. His reply to them
was the same as to the college women: that this special ses-
sion would be so occupied with the tariff and currency that
the Suffrage measure could not be considered.

In the meantime, the Congressional Committee had noti-
fied Suffragists all over the United States that a Suffrage
Amendment would be introduced in this special session of
Congress; asking them to urge the President to indorse
Suffrage in his forthcoming message; and to request their
"Representative in Congress to support Suffrage when it was
introduced. Letters poured into Washington from the re-
motest corners of the country.

This was the beginning of that intimacy which the Con-
gressional Committee — afterwards the Congressional Union,
afterwards the National Woman's Party — established with
its sympathizers and members all over the country. In the
nature of things — ^the political situation being changeable,
and demanding always subtle, delicate, and often swift and
decisive handling— the actual work at Washington had to
be planned and executed by a limited number. But those
few must be able, forceful, and swiftly executive spirits.
Their adherents all over the country were however kept as
closely and constantly as possible in touch with that chang-
ing situation.

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 35

In addition, the Congressional Committee did all possible
preliminary work with the incoming members of this Con-
gress. The result on the Progressive members was encour-
aging. Although there was a Woman Suffrage Committee
in the Senate, there was none in the House. Thitherto,
the Suffrage question had been sent to the Judiciary Com-
mittee, the graveyard of the House. As a result of the
work of the Congressional Committee, the Progressive
Caucus, which met before the new Congress assembled, gave
its unqualified indorsement to the proposal to create a
Woman Suffrage Committee in the House. The Congres-
sional Committee canvassed the Democratic members of the
House and urged them to take similar action. The Demo-
cratic Caucus, however, entirely ignored the question.

Having brought Suffrage to the attention of the new
President by the monster procession of March 3, the Con-
gressional Committee proceeded to bring it to the attention
of the new Congress by a second great demonstration. This
was in support of the Federal Amendment, and it took place
on the opening day of the special session of the Sixty-third
Congress, April 7, 1913. Delegates from each of the 435
Congressional districts in the United States assembled at
Washington, bringing petitions from the men and women of
their districts, asking for the passing of the Amendment.
After the mass-meeting, the delegates marched, each behind
her State banner, to the doors of Congress. The proces-
sion was greeted at the steps of the Capitol by a group of
Congressmen. One of them welcomed the petitioners in a
speech pledging his support to their cause. They then led
the delegation into the Rotunda, where a long receiving line
of members of Congress repeated his welcome. The Suf-
fragists took places which had been set aside for them in
the galleries of the Senate and the House and watched the
presentation of the petitions.

Immediately after the petitions were presented. Represen-
tative Mondell (Republican) of Wyoming, and Senator
Chamberlain (Democrat) of Oregon introduced the Suffrage

36 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Amendment. In the Senate this resolution was referred to
the Woman's Suffrage Committee, and in the House to the
Judiciary Committee. Named, as is customary, after those
who introduced it, the measure was known first as the
Chamberlain-Mondell Amendment, and later as the Bristow-
Mondell Amendment. It was in reality the famous Susan
B. Anthony Amendment — first introduced into Congress in
1878 by Senator Sargent of California — exactly as she drew
it up. The Anthony Amendment runs as follows:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State on account
of sex.

Section 2. Congress shall have power by appropriate legis-
lation to enforce the provisions of this article.

On that same day — April 7, 1913 — resolutions were intro-
duced in the House to create a Woman Suffrage Committee
similar to that in the Senate. This was only a tiny gain;
for that Committee was not actually created until Septem-
ber, 1917. But a little later occurred what was a decided
gain — the Senate created a Majority Committee on Woman
Suffrage. The Woman Suffrage Committee in the Senate
had been a Minority Committee thitherto. That meant
that, as its Chairman belonged to the Minority Party, its
existence was purely nominal.

All these four months, the five women who constituted
the Congressional Committee had been working at a tre-
mendous speed. They had been made into a Committee
on the understanding that the Committee would itself raise
the money necessary for its work. Four months' experience
had convinced them that the work of securing a Federal
Amendment required a much greater effort than five women,
working alone, could possibly give to it. The various
State associations composing the National American
Woman Suffrage Association were engrossed in their State
campaigns. Little could be expected from them in the way

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 37

of personal service or financial aid. When the Congressional
Committee appealed to individuals, they found that these
individuals were giving their time and service to the par-
ticular State in which they lived. The Congressional Com-
mittee realized that they must have an organization back
of them to assist with work and money, whose sole object
was national work. The Congressional Union for Woman
Suffrage was therefore formed by the Congressional Com-
mittee, with the approval of the President of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association.

The Congressional Union described itself as "a group
of women in all parts of the country who have joined to-
gether in the effort to secure the passage of an Amendment
to the United States Constitution enfranchising women." It
offered its members the privilege of making the oflSces at
Washington their headquarters while in the city. It adopted
colors — at the happy suggestion of Mrs. John Jay White —
of purple, white, and gold. The Union grew rapidly,
and was later admitted as an auxiliary to the National
American Woman Suffrage Association. The Congressional
Committee acted as the Executive Committee of this Con-
gressional Union. Throughout the year the Union was of
great assistance to the Committee. It reinforced its work
in every possible way.

The Suffrage resolution was now before the Committees
in both Houses. The Congressional Union concentrated on
securing a hearing before the Senate Committee. Every
effort was made to focus the attention of Suffragists and of
the country at large on the situation. A hearing was ar-
ranged before the Committee, at^which Dr. Anna Howard
Shaw, President of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, presided. In addition to this public hearing,
the members of the Senate Committee were interviewed. And
pursuing its course of keeping Suffragists in touch with
what was happening at Washington, the Congressional Com-
mittee circularized Suffragists aU over the country with

38 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

letters which informed them that the resolution was before
the Senate Committee, and asked them to write to this Com-
mittee urging a favorable report.

After six months of work occurred the first political
triumph of the Congressional Union. On May 13, the
Senate Committee voted to make a favorable report upon
the Suffrage resolution. There, however, matters rested —
with a favorable vote, but still in the Committee. The Suf-
frajgists, however, besieged the Committee with requests to
make the report and finally, on June 13, the report was
made to the Senate — the first favorable one in twenty-one
years. This put the measure on the Senate Calendar.

Immediately the Congressional Union turned its attention
to proving to the Senate how widespread was the support
of this measure in the United States.

A petition was circulated in every State in the Union.
It asked for the passage of the Amendment, and was ad-
dressed to the Senate. Thousands of signatures were ob-
tained. During June and July, these petitions were collected
and brought to Washington. Their arrival at the Capitol
on July 31 was the occasion of the third great demonstra-
tion. The petitioners came from every State, and they came
in every possible way. They came by train, by motor, by
caravan. They held meetings and collected signatures to
the great petition in the districts through which they passed.
All the delegations converged in the little town of Hyatts-
ville, outside Washington. There — at the village grand-
stand, they were met by members of the Congressional Union
and of the Woman Suffrage Committee of the Senate. The
reading clerk of the House of Representatives announced
the members of the delegations as they arrived in their sev-
eral motors. Members of the Senate Committee addressed
them on behalf of the Congressional Committee of the Con-
gressional Union. The Mayor of Hyattsville delivered to
them the key of the town. Mary Ware Dennett replied
for the delegates, and accepted the key of the town from
the Mayor. The automobiles then formed into a procession,

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 39

M which the first motor carried the members of the Senate
Committee. The long line of cars, fluttering flags, and
pennants, and each bearing the banner of its State delega-
tion, proceeded from Hyattsville along the old Bunker Hill
Road to the Capitol. There, the petitions were handed to
the various Senators. Three Senators spoke against Suf-
frage, but twenty-two in presenting the petitions spoke in
favor of it.

This was the second triumph of the Congressional Union.
Suffrage was debated in Congress — the first time since 1887.

The Congressional Committee now turned its attention to
the work of convincing Congress of the interest in the
Amendment of the women voters of the West. A Convention
of the National Council of Women Voters was h^ld in Wash-
ington on August 13, 14, and 15. Emma Smith Devoe,
National President of the Council, and Jane Addams, Na-
tional Vice-President, presided. Upon a motion by Jane
Addams, the Council passed the following Resolution,
strongly indorsing the Amendment:

Whereas at the present time one-fifth of the Senate, one-
seventh of the House^ and one-sixth of the electoral vote comes
from equal Suffrage States; and

Whereas, as a result of this political strength in Congress,
due to the fact that four million women of the United States
are now enfranchised, there is great hope of the passage in the
near future of the Federal Suffrage Amendment; therefore be it

Resolved, That the National Council of Women Voters con-
centrate its efforts upon the support of this Federal Amendment.

The Rules Committee of the House of Representatives on
August 14 then gave the Council a hearing on the question
of creating a Suffrage Committee in the House.

The Convention ended in a mass-meeting at the Belasco
Theatre, which, in spite of the midsummer heat of Wash-
ington, was crowded to the doors. The platform was filled
with Congressmen from Suffrage States. The women
speakers iterated and reiterated the demand of the women

40 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

voters of the West for immediate action by Congress, and
the Congressmen supported them.

In addition to these — ^processions, pilgrimages, petitions,
deputations, and hearings, hundreds of public meetings or-
ganized by the Washington Headquarters — were held every-
where. A constant series of deputations from their own
constituencies besieged the members of the Senate. All this
was making its inevitable impression on Congress. Those
days of the Sixty-third Congressional Session were crowded
ones. The President had told the Suffragists that so much
time must be given to the tariff and the currency that there
would be none left for Women Suffrage. Yet more time was
devoted to the Woman Suffrage question than ever before.
On September 18, Senator Wesley L. Jones of Washington
delivered a speech in the Senate, in which he urged that the
Suffrage Resolution should be passed. In the House, a
number of Representatives formerly opposed to the reso-
lution now declared that they would support it when it came
before them.

In the meantime, the tariff and currency had finally been
disposed of. A new Congress was to convene on December 1.
Ever since his inauguration. Suffrage agitation of a strong,
dignified, and convincing character had been brought to the
President's attention. Suffragists hoped, therefore, that the
President would feel that he could recommend the Suffrage
Amendment to this new Congress. They decided, however,
to present the matter to him in a forcible way. A fourth
deputation of seventy-three women from his own State of
New Jersey came to Washington in the middle of November.

This delegation arrived on Saturday afterndon, Novem-
ber 15. Until Monday morning, they tried in every possible
way to arrange for an appointment with the President at
the White House. Representative McCoy of New Jersey
endeavored to assist them in this matter. Their efforts and
his efforts were fruitless.

Monday morning, at 10 o'clock, Alice Paul telephoned

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 41

the Executive Office that, as it was impossible to find out
what hour would suit the convenience of the President, the
delegation was on its way to the White House. She explained
that they would wait there until the President was ready to
receive them, or would definitely refuse to do so. The clerk
at the Executive Office declared over the telephone that it
would be impossible to see the President without an appoint-
ment. He assured Alice Paul that such a thing had never
been done. Representative McCoy called up Headquarters,
and reported his failure to secure an appointment. On
being told that the delegation was going to call on the
President anyway, he protested vehemently against its pro-
ceeding to the White House without the usual official pre-
liminaries. Alice Paul's answer was a single statement, —
" The delegation has already started."

In double file the seventy-three New Jersey women
marched through Fifteenth Street, through Pennsylvania
Avenue, past the Treasury Department, and up to the
White House grounds. And, lo, as though their coming
spread paralyzing magic, everything gave way before them.
Two guards in uniform stood at the gate. They saluted
and moved aside. The seventy-three women :qiarched un-
challenged through the grounds to the door of the Executive
Office. An attendant there requested them courteously to
wait until after their two leaders should be presented to
the President by his Secretary.

The request that these seventy-three New Jersey women
made to President Wilson was that he should support the
Constitutional Amendment enfranchising women. President
Wilson replied : " I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and
your adherents here, and I will say to you that I was talking
only yesterday with several Members of Congress in regard
to the Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is one
in which I am deeply interested, and you may rest assured
that I will give it my earnest attention."

It is to be seen that the President's education had pro-
gressed— a little. To previous delegations, he had stated

42 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

merely that the tariff and currency would take so much of
the attention of Congress that there would be no time for
the Suffrage question. In advocating a Suffrage Committee
in the House, he had made an advance — tiny, to be sure,
but an advance.

In the last month of 1913 occurred in Washington the
Forty-fifth Annual Convention of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. The Convention opened
with a mass-meeting at the Columbia Theatre. Dr. Anna
Howard Shaw presided. Jane Addams and Senator Helen
Ring Robinson were the principal speakers. At the opening
meeting of the Convention, Lucy Burns repeated the warn-
ing of the Congressional Union to the Democratic Party :

The National American Women Suffrage Association is assem-
bled in Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise
the women of America.

Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more
powerful than the Democratic Party is today. It controls the
Executive Office, the Senate, and more than two-thirds of the
members of the House of Representatives. !^t is in a position to
give us effective and immediate help.

We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold
power are responsible to the country for the use of it. They
are responsible, not only for what they do, but for what they
do not do. Inaction establishes just as clear a record as does
a policy of open hostility.

We have in our hands today not only the weapon of a just case ;
we have the support of ten enfranchised States — States com-
prising one-fifth of the United States, one-seventh of the House
of Representatives and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More
than three million, six hundred thousand women have a vote in
Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national govern-
ment which irepreseifts women, and which appeals periodically
to the Suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of their right
to political freedom.

We cannot wait until after the passage of the scheduled ad-
ministration reforms. These reforms, which affect women, should
not be enacted without the consent of women. Congress is free
to take action on our question in the present Session. We ask

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 43

the administration to support the Woman Suffrage Amendment
in Congress with its full strength.

On December 4, a second meeting was held before the
Rules Committee of the House on the creation of a Woman
Suffrage Committee in the House of Representatives. Ida
Husted Harper reminded the Rules Committee at this hear-
ing that nine States and one Territory had enfranchised
their women, and that nearly four million women could vote
at a Presidential election, Mary Beard showed by an
analysis of the vote which sent President Wilson to the
White House that the Democratic strength was already
threatened, and how it could strengthen itself by espousing
the Suffrage Cause.

Notwithstanding the appeal of the seventy-three New
Jersey women, the President's message to Congress on De-
cember 2 failed to make any mention whatever of the Suf-
frage Amendment.

In consequence, a Committee representing each State in
the Union was appointed by the Convention of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association to wait upon the
President and protei^t. President Wilson was prevented by
illness from seeing any visitors during the week the Con-
vention met. The Convention, therefore, authorized the
appointment of a Committee of fifty-five delegates, who
should remain in Washington until the President was able
to see them. The interview took place the following Monday
at 12 : 30. This was the fifth deputation to President
Wilson. The President said, according to the Washington
Post of December 9:

I want you ladies, if possible — if I can make it clear to you —
to realize just what my present position is. Whenever I walk
abroad, I realize that I am not a free man; I am under arrest.
I am so carefully and admirably guarded that I have not even
the privilege of walking the street. That is, as it were, typical
of my present transference from being an individual with his
mind on any and every subject, to being an official of a great
Government and, incidentally, or so it falls out under our sys-

44 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

tern of Government, the spokesman of a Party. I set myself
this strict rule when I was Governor of New Jersey and have
followed it as President, and shall follow it as President, that
I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress policies which have
not had the organic consideration of those for whom I am
spokesman.

In other words, I have not yet presented to any legislature
my private views on any subject, and I never shall; because I
conceive that to be a part of the whole process of government,
that I shall be spokesman for somebody, not for myself.

When I speak for myself, I am an individual; when I speak
for an organic body, I am a representative. For that reason
you see, I am by my own principles shut out, in the language
of the street, from starting anything. I have to confine myself
to those things which have been embodied as promises to the
people at an election. That is the strict rule I set for nayself.

I want to say that with regard to all other matters I am not
only glad to be consulted by my colleagues in the two Houses,
but I hope that they will often pay me the compliment of con-
sulting me when they want to know my opinions on any subject.
One member of the Rules Committee did come to ask me what
I thought about this suggestion of yours of appointing a special
committee for consideration of the question of Woman Suffrage,
and I told him that I thought it was a proper thing to do. So
that as far as my personal advice has been asked by a single
member of the Committee, it has been given to that effect. I
wanted to tell you that to show you that I am strictly living up
to my principles. When my private opinion is asked by those
who are co-operating with me, I am most glad to give it; but I
am not at liberty until I speak for somebody besides myself to
urge legislation upon the Congress.

Dr. Shaw stepped forward to address the President within
the circle of deeply attentive hearers, spoke very quietly and
firmly in her clear and beautiful voice.

" Of the two — the President and Dr. Shaw," said one of
the spectators afterward, " Dr. Shaw spoke with greater
authority, as if with the consciousness of a perfectly just
cause. The President was less assured, more hesitat-
ing." ...

" As women are members of no political Party, to whom
are they to look for a spokesman? " Dr. Shaw asked.

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 45

"You speak very well for yourself," said the President,
laughing.

" But not with authority," said Dr. Shaw earnestly.
The deputation then left the President's Office.
Editorially in the Suffragist of December 13 appears:

The rule that President Wilson has so strictly set for himself,
is a rule not laid down in the Constitution nor in the practice of
preceding Presidents, nor in the President's own acts, nor in his
own words.

Nevertheless, the statement of President Wilson to the Presi-
dent of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is
of great value to the Suffrage movement. The President therein
declares that he is only the spokesman of his Party and that he
wiU initiate only legislation which has heen indorsed by his
Party. He puts the whole question of Federal legislation for
Woman Suffrage directly up to the Democratic Party in Con-
gress, and instructs Suffragists throughout the country to hold
that Party responsible for the fate of the Constitutional Amend-
ment enfranchising women. He has outlined for us, therefore,
the policy of bringing effective pressure to bear on the national
Democratic Party from all parts of the country, in an effort
to make them realize soon what they must recognize finally, that
it is more expedient for them as a Party to advocate Suffrage
than to ignore and resist it.

Nevertheless, the President's education had progressed
another step. For the first time, he felt the necessity of
explaining — and by implication — of excusing himself.

This visit to the President completed the principal work
of the year 1913 on the part of the Congressional Committee
and the Congressional Union.

Many things had been done in this year, in addition to
what has already been indicated. A district of Columbia
Branch of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage was
organized ; this was composed largely of Congressmen. Lec-
tures, receptions, tableaux, benefits, teas had been given,
and a Suffrage School opened in Washington. Seven large
mass-meetings, exclusive of Convention meetings, were held
at Washington. An uninterrupted series of indoor and

46 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

outdoor meetings, numbering frequently frbm five to ten a
day, constantly reminded Congress of the Suffrage question,
A summer campaign, carried on by Mabel Vernon and
Edith Marsden, covered the resort regions of New Jersey,
Long Island, and Rhode Island, and extended into the
South.

Twenty-seven thousand dollars had been raised at the
Washington Headquarters, and spent. And there were
results. The chief one was that it focussed the attention —
not only of Suffragists themselves — but of politicians and
the country at large on the Federal Amendment.

June, 1913, brought Presidential Suffrage to the women
of Illinois. Only Presidential Suffrage ; but that was very
important. Astute women everywhere were watching the
situation ; drawing their own and independent conclusions.

Toward the end of the year, the Congressional Union
established an official weekly organ, the Suffragist, edited
by the well-known publicist, Rheta Childe Dorr. The first
issue appeared on November 15, and it has been published
ever since.

Lucy Burns, whose editorials were marvels of ironic
logic, of forceful condensed expression, succeeded Mrs. '
Dorr. Then came Vivian Pierce, a trained newspaper woman ;
Sue White, well-known to Suffragists for her splendid work
in Tennessee; Florence Boeckel, able, efficient, untiring.
Pauline Clark, Clara Wold, Elizabeth Kalb contributed sup-
plementing editorial work.

The Suffragist has reported the activities first of the
Congressional Union, and next of the Woman's Party. It
is an extremely entertaining periodical, always interesting,
often brilliant, essentially readable. It contains editorials,
reports, sketches, verse, cartoons. Many famous people
have contributed articles. The reports of the workers in
the Woman's Party make much the most interesting reading
however. Many famous artists have given it drawings. The
most pertinent, though, are those contributed by a member
of the Congressional Union — ^'ma. Allender.

THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 47

Mrs. AUender's fertile and original pencil has traced
during the entire eight years of its history a running com-
mentary on the progress of the Woman's Party. She has a
keenjolitical sense. She has translated this aspect of the
feminist movement in terms that women alone can best
appreciate. Her work is full of the intimate everyday de-
tails of the woman's life from her little girlhood to her old
age. And she translates that existence with a woman's
vivacity and a woman's sense of humor ; a humor which plays
keenly and gracefully about masculine insensibility ; a humor
as realistic, but as archly un-bitter as that of Jane Austen.
It would be impossible, for any man to have done Mrs.
AUender's work, A woman speaking to women, about
women, in the language of women.

There is no better place than here to emphasize the work
of the Press Department. It will be apparent to the reader,
as the story of the Woman's Party unrolls itself, that the
work of this department was very diiBcult and very delicate.
The problem was twofold — to keep the action of the party
always in the public eye and to bring out the underlying
policy. This was not easy when the demonstrations of the
Woman's Party were of the kind whose initial effect was
to antagonize. Nevertheless, the Press Department mini-
mized that antagonism and minimized by a propaganda
which was as restrained in expression as it was vivid in
description. Newspaper men generally felt that they could
depend on the Woman's Party for news. Florence Brewer
Boeckel, who has been press chairman since 1915, is respon-
sible for this magnificent press campaign. But she has not
lacked help. Eleanor Taylor Marsh, Alice Gram, Beulah
Amidon, and Margaret Grahan Jones, have given her steady
assistance.

Early in the year 1914, the Congressional Union resigned
from the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
The constitution of the National Association permitted a
Suffrage body to join it in one of two ways. B|y one, a

48 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

new clause imposed a five per cent tax in dues upon its
budget. By another, it paid annually one hundred dollars
dues. The Congressional Union felt that a five per cent tax
upon its budget would seriously cripple its work. The
Union ofi'ered to become an associated body. The National
Association refused this offer, and the Congressional Union,
therefore, became an independent organization.

PRESSURE ON CONGRESS

The Suffragist of January 24, 1914, carried the follow-
ing editorial. In it is repeated the policy which the Con-
gressional Union had in the beginning adopted — that of
holding the party in power responsible.

The policy of the Congressional Union is to ask for a Woman
Suffrage Amendment from the Party in power in Congress, and
to hold them responsible for their answer to its request.

This policy is entirely non-partisan, in that it handles all
Parties with perfect impartial!^. If the Bepublicans were in
power, we would regard them in their capacity as head of the
Government as responsible for the enfranchisement of women.
If the Progressives or Socialists should become the majority
Party, and control the machinery of Congress, we would claim
from them the right to govern ourselves, and would hold them
responsible for a refusal of this just demand.

Today the Democrats are in power. They control the execu-
tive office, the Senate, and the House. They can, if they will,
enfranchise women in the present session; their refusal to do
so establishes a record which must necessarily be taken into con-
sideration by women when the Party seeks the re-indorsement
of the people at the polls.

This policy simply recognizes the effect of our American sys-
tem of Government. Ours is a government by Parties. The
majority by secret caucus, by the control of committees, by the
power of patronage, by their appeal to Party responsibility, by
the interest of Party solidarity, control the legislation of the
House. The present government recognizes this method of ad-
ministration with especial, and indeed admirable, frankness. It
owes much of its popularity today to its willingness to assume
full responsibility for all the legislation enacted in Congress;
for whatever is done, and what is not done. The two great
measures of the last session, tariff and currency, passed rapidly
and successfully through both Houses by the frank use of Party

discipline.

50 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Let us by all means deal directly with the people who can
give us what we want. The Democrats have it in their power
to enfranchise women. . . . This is not only our most logical
method of work, but it is also the most economical and expe-
ditious. Assuming that the Democrats yield nothing in the pres-
ent session, we can, when Congress closes, concentrate our forces
on those points where the Party is weakest, and thus become a
force worth bargaining with. At the present moment, the Senate
is the weakest point in the Democratic armor. To defeat even
a few Democratic Senators in November, 1914, would make a
serious breach ^in the Party organization. ... If, on the other
hand, we set out to attack every anti-Suffragist in Congress, we
should have hundreds to defeat, and every man would be safe
in whose constituency we did not organize. Imagine that, if at
the end of arduous labor, we had contrived to defeat a number
of Democratic anti-Suffragists, and an equal number of Repub-
lican anti-Suffragists, we should by immense sacrifice have com-
pletely nullified our own efforts, and left the strength of the
Parties just where it was before. . . .

What should we do in our enfranchised States, if we confined
ourselves to the plan of supporting individual Suffragists and
attacking individual anti-Suffragists, irrespective of their Party
affiliations.'' All the candidates for office in the enfranchised
States are Suffragists. Is it suggested that we be inactive in the
only places where we possess real political power? Our problem
at the present moment is to use the strength of women's votes
in national elections so as to force attention to the justice of
our claim from the present administration. . . .

But the Congressional Union cannot make it too clear that we
are not opposed to any Party today. We are asking the Demo-
crats to help us; we are awaiting their answer. We will frame
no policy for or against them or any other Party until this ses-
sion closes, and the great opportunity of the present Administra-
tion has come to an end. We entertain steady and undiminished
hopes that the Administration will recognize the justice and ex-
pediency of women's claims to self-government. The movement
is making immense strides in every part of the country; our
present voting strength is great, and will undoubtedly be increased
in the present year. It takes no great imaginative reach for the
ordinary Congressman to foresee the day when Woman Suffrage
will be an established fact throughout these United States.

There is already a strong sentiment in the Upper House for
Woman Suffrage, and a rapidly-growing interest in it in the
Lower House. We have no reason to expect wilful obstinacy

PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 51

from our American Congressmen. We Americans are adaptable
and imaginative, and can shape ourselves with peculiar ease to
coming events. The Democratic Party, if it is wise, will pass
our Amendment through Congress in the present session.

The first year Congressional Committee, consisting of
Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Mary Beard, Crystal Eastman, and
Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, continued their work in 1914 with
the Congressional Union under the name of the Executive
Committee of the Congressional Union ; but it was increased
by the addition of Mrs. William Kent, Elsie Hill, Mrs.
Gilson Gardner, Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, and Mrs. O. H. P.
Belmont.

The year opened with a meeting at the home of Mrs.
William Kent in Washington. Plans for the coming year
were submitted at that meeting. Among them was one for
a nation-wide demonstration on May 2, in which resolutions
supporting the Federal Amendment were to be passed. This
was to be followed by a great demonstration in Washington
on May 9, at which those resolutions should be presented
to Congress. Among them also was another plan for the
appeal to the women voters of the West for political action
in support of a Federal Amendment, if that Amendment had
not been passed before the next election. Nine thousand
dollars were pledged on the spot for these undertakings.
The work on the great demonstration of May 2 began at
once, and was pushed rapidly during the opening months
of the year.

In the meantime the work on Congress was continued.
It will be remembered that a proposal for the formation of
a Suffrage Committee in the House had been before the
Rules Committee since April 7, 1913, that it had been the
subject of two hearings arranged by the Congressional
Union. The first action in regard to this was simple and
decisive. The Democratic Members of the Rules Committee,
who constituted a Majority Committee, met first, apart from
their Republican and Progressive colleagues, and, by a vote
of four to three, decided against the formation of a Suffrage

52 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Committee. They then went through the form of a meeting
with the Republican and Progressive Members on January
24. The resolution, creating the Suffrage Committee, was
lost by a vote of four to four.

The Congressional Union, however, realized that the final
power with regard to Congressional action was with the
Democratic Caucus. They determined therefore — ^in order
that the responsibility for inaction or opposition flight be
placed on the Democrats as a Party — immediately to appeal
to that Caucus to overturn the decision of the Rules Com-
mittee. The necessary signatures were secured to a petition
calling for the Democratic Caucus of the House to take up
the question of the formation of this much-desired Suffrage
Committefe. The Caucus met on February 3, 1914, to con-
sider this subject. The Democratic Party had a choice of
two courses. It could order the Rules Committee, which it
of course controlled, to give a favorable report to the
House on the resolution creating a Suffrage Committee. Or
it could give no order at all of this kind; in which case it
revealed itself as responsible for the adverse action of the
Rules Committee.

What it did was to adopt a substitute resolution for the
resolution providing for the creation of a Committee of
Woman Suffrage.

That substitute resolution was : " Resolved, that the ques-
tion of Woman Suffrage is a State and not a Federal
question."

This was the first time in the history of the country that
either of the two great Parties had ever caucused on Woman
Suffrage.

Editorially the Suffragist put the situation pithily to
the women of America :

This is the definite lining up of tke Democratic Party
against Woman Snflfrage as a national measure. . . . Unless
the Democratic Party reconsiders its present position. Suffragists
must necessarily regard that Party as an obstruction in the path
of their campaign. . '. . They (the Democratic Party) have

PRESSURE ON CONGRESS S3

three votes to lose in the Senate and they lose control of this

Sivernment. There are nine States in which women vote for
nited States Senators. The result fn the Senatorial elections
in these States will undoubtedly depend largely upon the action
on Suffrage taken by the Democratic Party.

Although the Congressional Union welcomed any simpli-
fication of the Congressional machinery as by the creation
of a Suffrage Committee, its object was to secure action on
the Suffrage Amendment. Since April 7, 1913, the Amend-
ment had been before the Judiciary Committee in which it
had been introduced by Representative Mondell. The Con-
gressional Union asked for a hearing on the Amendment
before this Committee. March 3, 1914, was set for that
event.

Thitherto, these hearings had been dreary occasions,
sparsely attended. There was the half -circle of Committee
members, a trifle perfunctory in its attitude, the scattered,
tiny audience, very little interested or stirred ; the few Suf-
fragists pleading — eloquently, it is true — ^but pleading; using
^he inevitable Suffrage arguments, unanswerable, but thread-
bare. The hearing of March 3 was very different. The
Committee was electrically alert. . . . They listened in-
tently. . . . For the first time at a Congressional hearing,
propagandistic argument did not appear. The Suffragists
appealed to the Committee to report the Suffrage Resolution
to the House — not as a matter of justice to women — but
as practical politics. They pointed out to the Committee
that the women voters of the West would hold the Demo-
cratic Party responsible for the refusal of this Committee
to make that report.

In the meantime, highly important things had been going
on in the Senate. It will be remembered that the Suffrage
Resolution had been placed upon the Senate Calendar in
June, 1913. Ever since that date, it had been awaiting a
vote. It could be voted on any time up to the close of the
Sixty-third Congress (March 3, 1915).

54 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

At the beginning of the year 1914, more votes were
pledged in its favor than had carried the Income Tax in
the Senate, and sentiment in its favor was steadily increas-
ing among the Senators. Moreover, the prospect that the
Referendum elections of the coming autumn would add to
the number of Suffrage States promised an increase of Suf-
frage strength in the Senate. There remained — as it
transpired — a whole year before that Congress adjourned,
in which the work of obtaining the vote could have gone on.
These features of the situation made the Congressional
Union most desirous that the Resolution should not be voted
upon until every possible vote was won. However, Senator
Ashurst, who had reported the Bill to the Senate, had it
made " unfinished business " on March 2, 1914. It is the
spirit of " unfinished business " that it must be brought up
and voted on. In spite of the vigorous protests of the Con-
gressional Union, and of many Suffragists in all parts of
the country, it was brought to the vote on March 17. A
two-thirds vote was necessary to carry it. It received
thirty-five; a majority, it is true, of one vote; but failing
of the necessary two-thirds majority by eleven. The Con-
gressional Union blamed the Democratic leaders entirely for
this premature vote, as they were fully informed that a vote
at that time would mean defeat.

However, this was a memorable moment. It was the
first time since 1887 that Suffrage had been voted upon
in the Senate. And from the moment on March 2 when
it was made " unfinished business " until March 17, when
the vote' was taken, the Senate debated it almost continu-
ously.

On that same day — March 2 — Senator Shafroth of
Colorado introduced a resolution providing for a new Suf-
frage Amendment to the Federal Constitution. This was
to become famous as the Shafroth-Palmer Resolution. It
offered a path to the enfranchisement of women incredibly
cluttered and cumbered. It reads:

PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 65

Section 1. Whenever any number of legal voters of any State
to a number exceeding eight per cent of the number of legal
voters voting at the last preceding General Election held in such
State shall petition for the submission to the legal voters of said
State of the question whether women shall have equal rights
with men in respect to voting at all elections to be held in such
State, such question shall be so submitted; and if, upon such
submission, a majority of the legal voters of the State voting
on the question shall vote in favor of granting to women such
equal rights, the same shall thereupon be deemed established,
anything in the constitution or laws of such State to the contrary
notwithstanding.

Compare this with the simplicity and directness of the
original Susan B. Anthony Amendment:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
Statje on account of sex.

Section 2. Congress shall have power by appropriate legis-
lation to enforce the provisions of this article.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association
immediately rallied to the support of the Shaf roth-Palmer
Amendment; they continued to give io it their undivided
work for two years.

But the Congressional Union — I quote the vigorous words
of the Report of the Congressional Union for the year 1914 :

The Congressional Union immediately announced its deter-
mination to support only the original Amendment, known popu-
larly as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and in Congress
as the Bristow-Mondell Amendment. It maintained that to work
at the same time for two Suffrage amendments to the National
Constitution would enable the enemies of the bill to play one
against the other. Believing that one amendment only must be
supported, it felt that it was wise to support the amendment
which would give Suffrage itself rather than an amendment
which, after the same expenditure of effort would give only
another method of obtaining Suffrage — that is, would merely
establish the initiative on the Suffrage question. The Union,
moreover, feeling that the bane of the Suffrage cause at present
was too many and not too few referendumSj held that to pass

66 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

a Federal Amendment — ^which would inaugurate thirty-nine ref-
erendum campaigns would involve the movement in a dissipation
of resources such as its enemies would most deeply desire.
Finally, it held that the passage of one Suffrage amendment to
the National Constitution would make it extremely difficult to
pass another ; so that if the Shaf roth Bill became a law, it would
probably indefinitely postpone the passage of the Anthony,
Amendment, and doom the movement to years of referendum
campaigns. ^

Not at all daunted by the action of the Senate in defeating
the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, nor by the introduction
there of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, the Congressional
Union at once secured the re-introduction in the Senate of
the defeated Amendment. The measure was out of the
Senate only twenty-two hours. The following day. Senator
Bristow introduced a resolution identical with the one which
had been lost. On April 7, it was again reported from the
Woman Suffrage Committee, and took its place on the
Calendar of the Senate. This was just a year from the
date of its original introduction to this Senate. It was the
second favorable report of the Senate Committee in one
Congress.

Here we leave the work with Congress for a while, and
take up the matter of the education of the President. We
must go back a few months.

VII

PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

Although five different deputations — Congressional Union
members ; college women ; women voters ; New Jersey women ;
women from all the States — ^had called on the Presi-
dent, it was apparent that he had undergone no change in
his attitude toward the Suffrage question. On February 2,
1914, therefore, another deputation, the sixth — and an ex-
ceedingly interesting one — marched to the White House.
This deputation included women from the industrial world
and they represented more than fifty trades in which women
are engaged. They carried banners which bore quotations
from the President's New Freedom: " We Have Got to
Humanize Industry," and " I Absolutely Protest Against '
Being Put into the Hands of Trustees."

At the mass-meeting, preliminary to waiting upon the
President, Melinda Scott, an organizer of the Women's
Trade Union League, said: '

No one could be serious when they maintained that the ballot
will not help the working woman. It has helped the working
man to better his conditions and his wages. Men of every class
regard the ballot as their greatest protection against the injustice
. of other men. Women even more than men need the ballot to
protect their especial interests and their right to earn a living.
. . . We want a law that will prohibit home-work. . , . We
hear about the sacredness of the home. What sacredness is
there about a home when it is turned into a factory, where we
find a mother, very often with a child at her breast, running
a sewing machine? Running up thirty-sev£n seams for a cent.
Ironing and pressing shirts seventy cents a dozen, and children
making artificial flowers for one cent a gross. Think of it —
one hundred and forty flowers for one cent. Taking stitches
out of coats, helping their mothers where they have finished
them for six cents a coat. These women have had no chance

58 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

to make laws that would protect themselves or their children. . . .
The organized working woman has learnt through her trade
union the power of industrial organization, and she realizes what
her power would be if she had the ballot. . . . Men legislating
as a class for women and children as a class have done exactly
what every other ruling class has done since the history of the
world. They discriminate against the class that has no voice.
Some of the men say, " You women do not need a ballot ; we will
take care of you." We have no faith in man's protection. . . .
Give us the ballot, and we will protect ourselves.

This army of four hundred arrived safely, with perfect
police escort, at the doors of the White House. They were
amazed to learn that the President would see only twentyr
five of the women. He had said he would " receive the dele-
gation." The selected number then went in, the remaining
three hundred and seventy-five waited in line outside.

Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker of New York, said :

Mr. President: It is shaking and trembling, I, as a laundry
worker, come here to speak in behalf of the working women of
the United States. I have read about you, and think you are
fair, square, on the level, and so much a real democrat, that I
believe when it is made clear to you how much we working
women, who organize in the factories, the mills, the laundries,
and the stores, can help every true democrat, you will use your
power to wipe out this great injustice to women by giving us
a vote.

Rose Winslow said:

Mr. President: I am one of the thousands of women who work
in the sweated trades, and have been since a child, who give
their lives to build up these tremendous industries in this coun-
try, and at the end of the years of work, our reward is the
tuberculosis sanatorium or the street. I do not think to plead
with you, Mr. President, nor make a regular speech. I do
not speak to Presidents every day; it hasn't been my job, so I
don't do it very gracefully.

Here the President interrupted Miss Winslow by stating
that he did not see why she should be so nervous, as Presi-
dents are perfectly huban. Miss Winslow then continued:

PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 69

Yes, I knowj and that is why I can speak to you, because you
are human and have a heart and mind and can realize our
great need. I do not need to remind you how we women need
the ballot, etc.

The President said:

I need not tell you that a group of women like this appeals
to me very deeply indeed. I do not have to tell you what my
feelings are, but I have already explained — because I feel
obliged to explain — the limitations that are laid upon me as the
leader of a Party. Until the Party, as such, has considered the
matter of this very supreme importance and taken its position,
I am not at liberty to speak of it; and yet, I am not at liberty
to speak as an individual, for I am not an individual. As you
isee, I either speak to it in a message, as you suggest, or I do
not speak at all. That is the limitation I am under, and all I
can say to you ladies, is that the strength of your agitation in
this matter undoubtedly will make a profound impression.

In view of later opinions of the President in regard to
his leadership — and in view of the fact that later even
Democratic Congressmen referred to his " dictatorship " —
his attitude to the women this day was most interesting.

Mrs. Glendower Evans, who was in charge of the deputa-
tion, said:

We understand your position and its difficulties quite well, Mr.
President, but nevertheless we ask, where can we look for po-
litical action ? We recognize that the verdict must come not from
you alone, but from the whole Party. I do not ask you to break
with your Party. What I ask is, will you use your influence
within your Party ? I do not ask the impossible, though I might
from you, for you have done the impossible.

It is apparent that the President's education was pro-
gressing. He was beginning to be struck with the strength
of the Woman Suffrage agitation ; although he still believed
himself powerless to help in the work with Congress.

Early in June, 1914, the National Federation of Women's
Clubs meeting in Chicago, had given its indorsement, as an
organization, to Woman Suffrage. Following this action by'

60 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

the Federation, another delegation — the seventh — of five
hundred club women under the leadership of Mrs. Harvey
W. Wiley, waited upon the President on June 30. I quote
from the Suffragist:

The deputation had assembled for a preliminary mass-meeting
at the Public Library. . . . Leaving the Library, the deputa-
tion, which extended over several blocks, marched in single files
to the White House. ... It passed through the Arcade and
into the East Room. . . . Women were massed about the State
Apartment, filling it from end to end, and leaving a hollow
square in which Mrs. Ellis Logan and Mrs. Wiley and Rheta
Childe Dorr awaited the President's arrival. Preceded by his
aide, the President entered. . . .

" Mr. President," said Mrs. Dorr, " we are well aware that
you are the busiest of men. I shall therefore go directly to the
point and tell you that our reason for calling on you today is
to ask you if you will not use your powerful influence with
Congress to have the Bristow-Mondell Amendment passed in this
session."

The President replied:

Mrs. Wiley and Ladies: No one can fail to be impressed by
this great company of useful women, and I want to assure you
that' it is to me most impressive. I have stated once before the
position which, as leader of a Party, I feel obliged to take, and
I am sure you will not wish me to state it again. Perhaps it
would be more serviceable if I ventured upon the confident con-
jecture that the Baltimore Convention did not embody this very
important question in the platform which it adopted because of
its conviction that the principles of the Constitution which allotted
these questions to the State were well-considered principles from
which they did not wish to depart.

You have asked me to state my personal position in regard to
the pending measure. It is my conviction that this is a matter
for settlement by the States, and not by the Federal Govern-
ment, and, therefore, that being my personal conviction, and it
being obvious that there is no ground on your part for discour-
agement in the progress you are making, and my passion being
local self-government and the determination by the great com-
munities into which this nation is organized of their own policy
and life, I can only say that since you turned away from me
as a leader of a Party and asked me my position as a man, I

PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 61

am obliged to state it very frankly, and I believe that in stating
it I am probably in agreement with those who framed the plat-
form to which allusion has been made.

I think that very few persons, perhaps, realize the difficulty
and the dual duty that must be exercised, whether he will or
not, by a President of the United States. He is President of
the United States as an executive charged with the administra-
tion of the law, but he is the choice of a Party as a leader in
policy. The policy is determined by the Party, or else upon
unusual and new circumstances by the determination of those
who lead the Party. This is my situation as an individual. I
have told you that I believed that the best way of settling this
thing and the best considered principles of the Constitution with
regard to it, is that it should be settled by the States. I am
very much obliged to you.

The President paused. He looked relieved. There was a
moment's silence, and then Mrs. Dorr said:

" May I ask you this question? Is it not a fact that we have
very good precedents existing for altering the electorate by Con-
stitutional Amendment? "

The President's face changed. " I do not think," he said,
" that that has anything to do with my conviction as to the best
way that it could be done."

" It has not," agreed Mrs. Dorr, " but it leaves room for the
women of the country to say what they want through the Con-
stitution of the United States."

" Certainly it does," the President said hastily, " there is good
room. But I have stated my conviction. I have no right to
criticize the opinions of those who have different convictions and
I certainly would not wish to do so."

Mrs. Wiley stepped forward. " Granted that it is a State
matter," she said, " would it not give this great movement an
impetus if the Resolution now pending before Congress were
passed ? "

" But the Resolution is for an Amendment to the Constitu-
tion," the President objected.

" The States would have to pass upon it before it became an
Amendment," said Mrs. Wiley. "Would it not be a State
matter then ? "

" Yes," the President interrupted, " but by a very different
process, for by that process it would be forced upon the minority;
they would have to accept it."

" They could reject it if they wished to," said Mrs. Dorr.
" Three-fourths of the States would have to pass it."

62 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

" Yes," the President said, with distinct annoyance, " but the
other fourth could not reject it."

" Mr. President," said Mrs. Dorr, " don't you think that when
the Constitution was framed it was agreed that when three-
fourths of the States wanted a reform, the other fourth should
accept it also ? "

The President was plainly disconcerted. He stepped back.

" I cannot say," he replied frigidly, " what was agreed upon.
I can only say that I have tried to answer your question, and
I do not think it is quite proper that I submit myself to cross-
examination."

" Very well," Mrs. Dorr said quietly. " We will not cross-
examine you further."

" Thank you, Mr. President," said Mrs. Wiley, " for your
courtesy in receiving us."

The President bowed. " I am very much obliged to you," he
said. " It has been a very pleasant occasion."

In the Suffragist Lucy Burns said editorially :

The President has told a deputation of club women that they
must win political freedom from State Legislatures; but not
from him, not from Congress.

This position is obvious pretense.. The national government
has the power, granted it by the constitution, to enfranchise
women. It has, therefore, the duty of doing so, if women's
claim to enfranchisement is just.

The President knows as well as we do the enormous difficulty
of winning the vote by amending the Constitution of thirty-nine
different States. It is amazing that a man can be found who
will calmly direct women to take up this great burden when
men are responsible for their need. Men alone, in all but ten
States, have the power to change our laws. The good or evil
of these laws is their praise or blame. It is a public injustice
today that men deny to women in the ballot a means of self-
protection which they are glad to possess themselves. Men are
ethically on the defensive — particularly the men, or group of
men, who from time to time monopolize political power. For the
President of the United States, who incorporates in himself the
power of the whole nation, and who is, therefore, more respon-
sible than any other persoij today for the subjugation of women,
to declare that he washes his hands of their whole case, is to
presume upon greater ignorance among women than he will find
they possess.

Nevertheless, we are specifically informed by the President

PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 63

that it is " not proper " for us to " cross-examine " him on the
grounds of his refusal to help us.

Only fitfully do women realize the astounding arrogance of
their rulers.

And later:

Some few curious commentaries cropped up editorially.
Under the caption, "Heckling the President/* the Netif York
Times says: "It certainly was not proper. The President of
the United States is not to be heckled or hectored or made a
defendant. ... To catechise him when he had finished his
speech to them is a thing never done by similar delegations of
men."

The Times has not grasped the fact that no similar delegation
of men is possible. Men approach their own representative.
If he disagrees with them, they have a legitimate remedy in
their own hands, and can choose another representative at a
duly appointed time. Women approach the President as members
of a disfranchised class. The President does not represent them.
He bears no constitutional relation to them whatever. If the
President rejects their appeal, they have no legal means of
redress. If they may not question the President on the justice
of his refusal to help them, cannot question him gently and
reasonably as they did — ^their position is indeed a subservient one.

And who told the Times that men never question the President
" after he had finished his speech to them ? " While the Tariff
Bill was before Congress, representatives of men's interests
argued with him for hours. But they were men, and voters.

On January 6, 1915, another deputation — the eighth —
of one hundred and fifty Democratic women appeared before
the President. Mrs. George A. Armes, President of the
Association of the National Democratic Women of America,
introduced the speakers, Alberta Hill and Dr. Frances G.
Van Gasken. He greeted Miss Hill with marked cordiality
and listened attentively as she briefly and with great earnest-
ness pointed out that, while the Federal Government pro-
tected men in the exercise of citizenship throughout the
United States, a woman lost her right to vote when she
crossed the line from a Suffrage to a non-Suffrage State.
Miss 'Hill read the following extracts from the speech de-
livered by Mr. Wilson on the occasion of the formation of

64 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

the Wilson and Marshall League at Spring Lake, New
Jersey, two months after his nomination.

When the last word is said about politics, it is merely the life
of all of us from the point of view of what can be accomplished
by legislation find the administration of public offices. I think
it is artificial to idivide life up into sections: it is all of one
piece though you can't attend to all pieces of it at once.

And so when the women, who are in so many respects at the
heart of life, begin to take an interest in politics, then you know
that all the lines of sympathy and intelligence and comprehen-
sion are going to be interlaced in a way which they have never
been interlaced before; so that our politics will be of the same
pattern with our life. This, it seems to me, is devoutly to be
wished.

And so when the women come into politics, they come in to
show us all those little contacts between life and politics, on
account of which I, for myself, rejoice that they have come
to our assistance; they will be as indispensable as they are
delightful.

The President listened with close attention, a smile quiv-
ering at the corners of his mouth. As she concluded, a
ripple of amusement ran around the circle of auditors, and
the President laughed outright.

" I cannot argue as well as you can," he told Miss Hill
with evident enjoyment. He said further:

I am most unaffectedly complimented by this visit that you
have paid me. I have been caUed on several times to say what
my position is in the very important matter that you are so
deeply interested in. I want to say that nobody can look on
the fight you are making without great admiration, and I cer-
tainly am one of those who admire the tenacity and the skill
and the address with which you try to promote the matter that
you are interested in.

But I, ladies, am tied to a conviction which I have had all
my life that changes of this sort ought to be brought about State
by State. If it were not a matter of female Suffrage, if it were
a matter of any other thing connected with Suffrage, I would
hold the same opinion. It is a long standing and deeply matured
conviction on my part and therefore I would be without excuse
to my own constitutional principles if I lend my support to this

PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 65

very important movement for an amendment to the Constitu-
tion of the United States.

Frankly I do not think that this is the wise or the permanent
way to build. I know that perhaps you unanimously disagree
witii me but you will not think the less of me for being perfectly
frank in the avowal of my own convictions on that subject; and
certainly that avowal writes no attitude of antagonism, but
merely an attitude of principle.

I want to say again how much complimented ! am by your
call and also by the confidence that you have so generously
expressed in me, Mrs. Armes. I hope that in some respect I
may live to justify that confidence.

VIII

THE STRUGGLE WITH THE RULES COMMITTEE

We now return to the work in Congress. Again it is neces-
sary to go back into history a few months.

All these months, the work of organizing the nation-wide
demonstration of May 2 — which had been decided upon at
the opening meeting of the Congressional Union for 1914
— had been going on.

The Congressional Union sent organizers into all the
States of the Union to make plans for the demonstration.
Minnie E. Brooke went through every State in the South.
Mabel Vernon, one of the organizers for the Congressional
Union, traveled through the southwestern part of the coun-
try and up through California, ending her trip in Nevada.
Crystal Eastman of the Executive Committee took care of
the Northwestern States, Emma Smith DeVoe covered the
Far Western States ; Jessie Hardy Stubbs, the Middle
Western States; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Alice Paul, as-
sisted by Olive Hasbrouck, New England and the Middle
Atlantic States.

On February 12, the National American Woman Suffrage
Association promised its co-operation also, and from that
date aided in making the demonstration a success.

The demonstration — taking the form of parades in most
cases, meetings in a few — occurred in at least one great city-
in every State. The following resolution was adopted at
the various gatherings.

Resolved, that this meeting calls upon Congress to take imme-
diate and favorable action upon the Bristow-Mondell Resolution
enfranchising women.

The culminating demonstration occurred May 9 in Wash^
ington. There was a mass-meeting at the Belasco Theatre,

STRUGGLE WITH RULES COMMITTEE 67

and following this a jirocession starting promptly at three
o'clock, marched to the Capitol. At the foot of the Capitol
steps, the enormous gathering sang the Woman's March.
Then five hundred and thirty-one delegates representing
every Congressional and Senatorial district in the country,
bearing resolutions passed at the country-wide demon-
strations, marched up the long steps into the great Rotunda
of the Capitol. A Committee of Senators and Representa-
tives awaited the delegates, received the resolutions and
introduced them on the floor of each House of Congress.

Here, as always, Alice Paul visualized her work in
pageantry. On this occasion, that pageantry was particu-
larly beautiful. Zona Gale writes in the Suffragist:

" I shall watch it, but it will not mean anything to me," said
a visitor to me on Saturday, but that night she said: " I leaned
out of my window, and held my screen up with one hand, and
let the sun beat in my face for the forty minutes that you were
passing, and I wept. To think of your being part of it — and
caring like that — and the men there on the sidewalk holding
back, by what right, what you ask ! "

The elTect of this lengthened — and therefore accumulative
— nation-wide demonstration was immediately felt at the
national Capitol. Between the dates of the demonstration
throughout the States May 2, and the demonstration in
Washington, May 9, the Judiciary Committee reported the
Mondell Resolution without recommendation, but with an
overwhelming vote, to the House. This marked an epoch
in the Suffrage work in the United States ; for Suffrage had
never been debated on the floor of the House, and not since
1890 had it progressed beyond the Committee stage in the
House. The Resolution rested on May 5 at the foot of the
highly congested House calendar. On May 13, Representa-
tive Mondell introduced a Resolution asking time for an
early consideration of the Suffrage Amendment. The adop-
tion of this Resolution meant that the Amendment would
be taken up, debated, and voted on.

68 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

The Rules Committee, to which the Resolution was re-
ferred, failed to act upon it. Suffragists began to besiege
the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee, however,
proved unamenable to argument, discussion, or entreaty.

Later in the year, in a speech at the Newport Conference,
Lucy Burns said of the Rules Committee that it " adopted
devious means for avoiding action on the Suffrage Resolu-
tion. It was difficult for them to vote against it, and it
seemed difficult for them to vote for it. They apparently
decided that the best policy for them to pursue was to take
no action at all, so they hit upon the happy expedient of
holding no meetings whatever."

A detailed account of the action of the Rules Committee
proves the adamancy of Party control. It gives some idea
of the obstacles which ingenious politicians can put in the
way of citizens, even though those citizens are making a per-
fectly legitimate request.

Mr, Henry, the Chairman of the Rules Committee, had
declared in the spring that he thought it was out of the
power of his Committee to take action (i.e. on the matter
of the Suffrage Resolution which mas only to allot time m
the House for the discussion of the Suffrage Amendment)
since the Suffrage Amendment had not been favorably acted
upon at the last Democratic Caucus : " You may tell this to
the Press. You may teU it to the newspapers," Mr. Henry
said ; " my hands are tied."

However, early in June, the Suffragist says, "Mr.
Henry's view of his political helplessness weakened slightly."
He promised to report out the Suffrage Resolution. But
he could not be prevailed upon to state when he would do
so. The Congressional Union, therefore, organized a series
of deputations which visited the Rules Committee during all
the long, hot summer and the long, hot fall. Deputations
from nearly every State in the Union and from nearly
every occupation and profession of women waited upon the
members of the Rules Committee. The reader must remem-
ber always that they were asking — ^not that the Amendment

STRUGGLE WITH RULES COMMITTEE 69

be passed — only that a few hours be set aside for the dis-
cussion of the Suffrage question in the House of Represen-
tatives. Repeated deputations called upon individual mem-
bers of the Committee. On June 10, the Committee met, but
decided to postpone action on the Suffrage question till
July 1. Mr. Henry left immediately for Texas. A large
deputation came to Washington to be present at the July 1
meeting. Many of the most prominent members of the Cliib-
women's Deputation of five hundred, who had called the
afternoon of June 30 on the President, remained in Wash-
ington overnight, so that they might be present at the
meeting.

When, however, they arrived at the Committee room, they
were told that the Committee would not meet, although no
notice had been given of any change of date of the meeting.
Mr. Henry had not returned to Washington. There was a
quorum of the Committee in town ; but the Democratic mem-
bers said that they were bound by a " gentlemen's agree-
ment " among themselves not to meet. August 1 was set
for the next meeting.

On July 13, a deputation of more than a hundred mem-
bers of the Congressional Union, led by Alice Paul, Lucy
Burns, and Mrs. Gilson Gardner, called upon the individual
members of the Rules Committee. They asked each member
to sign a petition requesting the Acting Chairman, Mr. Pou,
to call the Committee together for the purpose of reporting
out the Resolution on the Suffrage Amendment. This peti-
tion was signed by the two Republican members of the Com-
mittee in Washington, and the one Progressive member.
The two Democratic members then in Washington refused
to sign. The petition was presented to Mr. Pou in his office
by Representative Mondell.

Mr. Pou rose from his chair, viewing with amazement the
numbers of the deputation as they filed into the room till
all available space was occupied, leaving the majority of
their number in the corridor. Mr. Pou definitely declined
to call the meeting, although a quorum of the Committee

70 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

was in the city, and although all of the Republican members
on the Committee and the Progressive member had requested
a meeting. Mr. Pou stated that he was bound by a " gentle-
man's agreement " entered into by the Democratic members
to hold no meetings of the Committee before August 1. He
said, " The Democratic members agreed not to hold any
meetings until August 1. In view of that understanding, I
would not feel at liberty to call the Committee together.
. . . When the Republicans were in charge, they decided
what they were going to do; now that we are in charge,
we decide what we are going to do."

On August 1, a deputation consisting of Lucy Burns and
Mrs. Gilson Gardner from the Congressional Union accom-
panied by Maude F. Clark, called upon Mr. Pou. The
forthright Lucy Burns began. " Mr. Pou, today is the first
day of August. You told us when a Committee of our
'Organization called upon you in July that the Democratic
members of the Committee had a ' gentlemen's agreement '
not to hold a meeting until August 1. Now that the day
has come we should be glad to know when a meeting of your
Committee will be held to consider House Resolution 514,
allotting time for the consideration of the Suffrage Amend-
ment in the House."

Mr. Pou informed the delegation that Mr. Henry, Chair-
man of the Rules Committee, would return to Washington
on Monday, August 3, and that a meeting of the Committee
would be called for that day. Among other things, Mr.
Pou made the significant statement, " The Rules Committee
has in its keeping the policy of the Democratic Party in
Congress."

On August 3, a second delegation from the Congressional
Union, consisting of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Mrs. Gilson
Gardner, Dr. Clara E. Ludlow, went to attend the promised
meeting at the office of the Chairman, Mr. Henry. The elu-
sive Mr. Henry was at last visible in the flesh. He informed
these women that no meeting of the Committee had been
called for that day. He did not know when it would be

STRUGGLE WITH RIFLES COMMITTEE 71

called, nor what measures it would consider. He suggested
that they call again in a few days.

On August 28, the Rules Committee finally met. A depu-
tation from the Congressional Union presented themselves
at the door. The deputation consisted of Mrs. Gilson
Gardner, Minnie E. Brooke, Mrs. S. B. McDuffie, Virginia
Arnold.

At the door of the Committee room, Mr. Henry's secre-
tary declared that it would be impossible for him to take
a message or a card to Mr. Henry.

"I should be glad, then," said the gently diplomatic
Mrs. Gardner, " to send a card to other niembers of the
Committee."

" The Chairman has given orders," said the secretary,
" that no messages may be sent in to the Committee room."

"I quite understand," said Mrs. Gardner, "that Mr.
Henry can speak fot the majority members of the Com-
mittee, but surely not for the Republican and Progressive
members, and I should like your permission to send word
in to one of them."

The secretary maintained that this was against Mr.
Henry's specific orders.

Mrs. Gardner then went on very gently : " It is not the
desire of the deputation to disturb the Committee; but, on
the other hand, it is the sense of the deputation that it is
necessary to send the Committee a message. What would
you suggest that we do .'' " i

The secretary considered and decreed, " A message might
be sent in by telephone." Mrs. Gardner accepted the use
of Mr. Henry's desk telephone, called up Representative
Kelly who was attending the meeting in the adjoining Com-
mittee room, and asked if he would bring the Suffrage
Resolution to the attention of the Committee. Mr. Kelly
promptly promised to call up the Suffrage Resolution if it
were possible to do so. This colloquy effectively brought the
matter before the Committee.

The Suffrage Resolution was brought up, but a substitute

72 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

motion that the Committee adjourn was immediately made
and carried. It was a tie vote, but Mr. Henry, as chairman,
cast the deciding vote. The Committee accordingly ad-
journed without having taken action on the Suifrage
Resolution. >

The Congressional Union, undaunted, maintained its
siege of the Rules Committee until Congress adjourned in
October. Throughout the remaining months of that Con-
gressional Session, however, the Rules Committee continued
its policy of evasion. No action was taken before ad-
journment.

Of course, all this blocking of their efforts on the part
of the Democrats made inevitable the election policy which
the Congressional Union was about to adopt — ^that of hold-
ing them " responsible."

THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS

In the meantime, the Congressional Union had been forming
an Advisory Council which continued to Support the Con-
gressional Union — and later the Woman's Party — ^with ad-
vice] and work during the rest of its history. The personnel
of the Advisory Council has changed from time to time ; but
always it has been a large body and an able one.

The list of membership has included many famous names ;
women political leaders; women trades-unionists; women of
wealth and position; women active in their communities. It
included professional women of every sort ; doctors, lawyers,
clergymen. It included artists of every description; actors,
singers, painters, sculptors. It included publicists of every
kind; fictionists, poets, dramatists, essayists. It included
social workers of every class. And these women have rep-
resented all parts of the Union.

On August 29 and 30, this newly-formed Advisory Council
met at Newport. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont did everything
to make the occasion a success. She threw open Marble
House which, hung with the great purple, white, and gold
banners of the Congressional Union and flooded with golden
light, made an extraordinary background for the delibera-
tions of the Conference. In every way possible for her she
used the beauty and social prestige of Newport to give the
occasion dignity, prominence, and publicity. Her daughter,
the Duchess of Marlborough, had joined the Congressional
Union just previous to this Conference. Little she thought
and little the Congressional Union thought that as an Eng-
lish woman, she would be a voter, would be elected to the
London City Council before her mother, an American
woman, was enfranchised.

74 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Here, for the ^st time, the plan of holding the Democratic
Party— the Party in power — responsible for the slowness
with which the Suffrage work was progressing, and, in con-
sequence, of working against it, was adopted as a program
actually to be carried out.

Lucy Burns made a magnificent speech on that occasion.
She pointed out that the Democratic Party was in complete
possession of the National Government, controlling the
Presidential chair, the Senate, possessing an overwhelm-
ing majority in the House. She a,nalyzed the working of
Congress: she showed that our government is a government
by Party: that no measures of importance had passed
through the Sixty-third Congress without the backing of the
Party in power : atid that no measure could pass that Con-
gress if opposed by that Party.

She amplified this thesis. She showed that the President,
the leader of the Party, had seven times refused his powerful
aid to the movement. She showed that in the Senate the
Democratic leaders blocked the Suffrage measure by bring-
ing it to a vote at a time when they acknowledged it would
be defeated. She showed that in the House, the Rules Com-
mittee had consistently blocked the Amendment, both by pre-
venting the creation of a (Suffrage Committee and by
preventing consideration of the Amendment in the House.
And she proved by the words of the acting chairman of
the Rules Committee that that Committee had in its keeping
" the policy of the Democratic Party." She showed that
the Democratic Caucus had taken definite action against the
Suffrage Amendment. It had declared that Suffrage was not
a question for national consideration and so it had refused
to sanction the creation of a Suffrage Committee.

Alice Paul, first asking the press to withdraw, outlined the
proposed election program. She asked the members of the
Conference not to reveal it until the middle of September
when the Congressional Union would be ready to put it
into practical operation. This is her speech on that occa-
sion:

FIRST APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 76

From the very beginning of our work in Washington, we have
followed one consistent policy from which we liave not departed
a single moment. We began our work with the coming in of
the present Congress and immediately went to the Party which
was in control of the situation and asked it to act. We deter-
mined to get the Amendment through the Sixty-third Congress,
or to make it very clear who had kept it from going through.
Now, as has been shown, the Democrats have been in control
of all branches of the Government and they are therefore re-
sponsible for the non-passage of our measure.

The point is first, who is our enemy and tlien, how shall that
enemy be attacked?

We are all, I think, agreed that it is the Democratic Party
which is responsible for the blocking of the Suffrage Amendment.
Again and again that Party has gone on record through the
action of its leaders, its caucus^ and its committees so that an
impregnable case has been built up against it. We now lay
before you a plan to meet the present situation.

We propose going into the nine Suffrage States and appealing
to the women to use their votes to secure the franchise for the
women of the rest of the country. All of these years we have
worked primarily in the States. Now the time has come, we
believe, when we can really go into national politics and use
the nearly four million votes that we have to win the vote for
the rest of us. Now that we have four million voters, we need
no longer continue to make our appeal simply to the men. The
struggle in England has gotten down to a physical fight. Here
our fight is simply a political one. The question is whether we
are good enough politicians to take four million votes and or-
ganize them and use them so as to win the vote for the women
who are still disfranchised.

We want to attempt to organize the women's vote. Our
plan is to go out to these nine States and there appeal to all
the women voters to withdraw their support from the Democrats
nationally until the Democratic Party nationally ceases to block
Suffrage. We would issue an appeal signed by influential women
of the East addressed to the women voters as a whole asking
them to use their vote this one time in the national election
against the Democratic Party throughout the whole nine States.
Every one of these States, with one exception, is a doubtful
State. Going back over a period of fourteen years, each State,
except Utah, has supported first one Party and then another.
Here are nine States which politicians are thinking about and
in these nine States we have this great power. If we ask those

76 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

women in the nine Suffrage States as a gtoup to withhold their
support from this Fiarty as a group which is opposing us, it will
mean that votes will be turned. Suppose the Party saw votes
falling away all over the country because of their action on the
Trust question — ^they would change their attitude on Trust legis-
lation. If they see them falling away because of their attitude
on Suffrage they will change their attitude on Suffrage. When
we have once affected the result in a national election^ no
Party will trifle with Suffrage any longer.

We, of course, are a little body to undertake this — ^but we
have to begin. We have not very much money; there are not
many of us to go out against the great Democratic Party. Per-
haps this time we won't be able to do so very much, though I ,
know we can do a great deal, but if the Party leaders see that
some votes have been turned they will know that we have at
least realized this power that we possess and they will know
that by 1916 we will have it organized. The mere announce-
ment of the fact that Suffragists of the East have gone out to
the West with this appeal will be enough to make every man
in Congress sit up and take notice.

This last week one Congressman from a Suffrage State came
to us and asked us if we would write just one letter to say
what he had done in Congress to help us. He said that one
letter might determine the election in his district. This week
the man who is running for the Senatorial election in another
Suffrage State came to us and asked us to go out and help him
in his State — asked us simply to announce that he had been our
friend. Now if our help is valued to this extent, our opposition
will be feared in like degree.

Our plan is this: To send at least two women to each of
those nine States. We would put one woman at the center who
would attend to the organizing, the publicity and the distribu-
tion of literature. We would have literature printed showing
what the Democratic Party has done with regard to Suffrage
in the Sixty-third Congress. We would have leaflets printed from
the Eastern women appealing to the Western women for help,
and we would have leaflets issued showing how much the en-
franchised woman herself needs the Federal Amendment because
most important matters are becoming national in their organiza-
tion and can only be dealt with by national legislation. We
could reach every home in every one of those nine States with
our literature, without very great expense. One good woman
at the center could make this message, this appeal from Eastern
women, known to the whole State. The other worker would

''•^,

Why Is the Gikl from the West Getting All the Attention ?
Nina Allender in The Suffragist.

FIRST APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 77

attend to the speaking and in six weeks could easily cover all
the large towns of the State.

This is the plan that we are considering, and that we are
hoping to put through. We would be very much interested to^
hear what you think about it and want, of course, to have your
co-operation in carrying it through.

The Conference voted to unite behind the Bristow-Mondell
Amendment in Congress and to support an active election
campaign against candidates of the Democratic Party. It
raised over seven thousand dollars to meet the expense of
this campaign.

The details of the election campaign project were imme-
diately worked out; organizers were selected and after a
farewell garden party on September 14, they started for
the nine enfranchised States. Headquarters were opened in
San Francisco under Lucy Burns and Rose Winslow; in
Denver, Colorado, under Doris Stevens and Ruth Noyes ; in
Phoenix, Arizona, under Jane Pincus and Josephine Casey;
in Kansas City, Kansas, under Lola C. Trax and Edna S.
Latimer; at Portland, Oregon, under Jessie Hardy Stubbs
and Virginia Arnold; in Seattle, Washington, under Mar-
garet Whittemore and Anne McCue ; at Cheyenne, Wyoming,
under Gertrude Hunter; at Salt Lake City, Utah, under
Elsie Lancaster; at Boise City, Idaho, under Helena Hill
Weed.

In these centers, open-air, drawing-room, and theatre
meetings followed each other in rapid succession. In many
districts, the campaigners canvassed from door to door.
Window-cards, handbills, cartoons, moving-picture films, and
voiceless speeches, calling upon the women voters to refuse
their support to the Party which had blocked the National
Suffrage Amendment, appeared everywhere from Seattle to
Phoenix. A pithily worded Appeal to the Women Voters
was placed in the hands of the women voters. Press bulletins
describing the campaign against the Democratic candidates
for Congress and reiterating the record made by the Demo-

78 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

cratic Party on the Suffrage question, were issued daily.
Literature dealing with the record of the Democratic Party
and with the value to the woman voter of a national Suf-
frage Amendment, were sent to innumerable homes in every
Suffrage State.

The Suffragist, which teemed with reports of what these
vigorous campaigners were doing, presents pictures which
could have occurred nowhere in the world but the United
'States, and nowhere in the United States but the West.
The speakers were interesting, amusing, full of information
and enthusiasm. With a sympathy and understanding
typically western, men and women responded immediately,
responded equally to this original campaign.

All the time, of course, these speakers were educating the
people of the United States in regard to the work of Con-
gress. ' This was a new note in Suffrage campaigns ; but it
was the policy of the Cobgressional Union at all times
whether campaigns were being waged or not.

From the Suffragist of September 19, I quote from a
report of the enterprising Jessie Hardy Stubbs, who actually
began her work on board the North Coast, Limited :

Here we are — all bound for the field of battle. Miss McCue,
Miss Whittemore and I are together. Miss Whittemore joined
us at Chicago full of earnestness and zeal. We have pat up
signs in each car that there will be a meeting tonight in the
observation car, and that we will speak on the record of the
Democratic Party in Congress and Women Suffrage. There is
much interest. We have sold ten Suffragists today on board the
train, secured new subscribers to the Suffragist, and contribu-
tions for the campaign.

Doris Stevens writes in the Suffragist of October 3:

Friday afternoon, Mrs, Lucius M. Cuthbert, a daughter of
ex-Senator Hill, gave us a drawing-room meeting in her beau-
tiful Denver home. She invited representative women from all
Parties to come and hear of the work of the Union, to which
invitation about one hundred women responded. One Democratic
lady came up to me after the meeting and said, " I had no idea

FIRST APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 79

you women had been so rebuffed by my Party. I am convinced
that my duty is to the women first, and my Party second."
Another: "You have almost convinced me that we women must
stand together on this national issue." And so it went. And,
as our charming hostess pointed out, the applause was often led
by a prominent Democratic woman. Offers of help, loans of
furniture, and general expressions of eagerness to aid were
made on every side. The meeting was a splendid success, judg^
ing from the large number of women who joined the Union
and the generous collection which was given.

In the Suffragist of October 10, Lola Trax writes:

The meeting at Lebanon was especially well advertised. The
moving picture shows had run an advertising slide ; the Wednes-
day prayer meeting had announced my coming, and the Public
Schools had also made announcements to their pupils. The
Ladies' Aid Society invited me to speak in the afternoon, while
they were quilting; and thus another anti-Suffrage argument was
shattered; for quilting and politics went hand in hand.

At Phillipsburg the meeting was on the Court House green.
It is fifty-seven miles from Phillipsburg to Osborne and the trip
has to be made by freight. I was on the road from six-thirty
o'clock in the morning until three p.m. About a dozen passen-
gers were in the caboose on the freight, and we held a meeting
and discussion which lasted about forty-five minutes. Upon
reaching Osborne at three o'clock I found about one hundred
people assembled for an auction sale in the middle of the street.
Cots, tables, and chairs were to be' offered at sacrifice prices.
The temptation to hold a meeting overcame fatigue. I jumped
into an automobile nearby and had a most interested crowd until
the auctioneer came. I had been unable to secure the Town
Hall because a troupe of players were making a one night stand
in the town. The meeting at night was also in the open air.

In the Suffragist of October 10, Jessie Hardy Stubbs
continues :

On Tuesday evening, September 28, I spoke in the Public
Library, explaining our mission in Oregon. Mr. Arthur L.
Moulton, Progressive Candidate for Congress from the Third
District presided, and made a very clever introductory speech.
Many questions were asked by Democratic women which brought
out a spirited defense on the part of several of those present.

80 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

One Democratic woman maintained that it would be a most
ungrateful position on the part of the Oregon women to vote
against Chamberlain, who had always been a friend of Suffrage,
whereupon a distinguished-looking woman arose and said : " Oh,
no. It would merely be a case of not loving Chamberlain less,
but of loving Suffrage more."

I spoke before the Sheet Metal Workers' Union last night, and
expect to address every union before the campaign is over. There
are only two women's unions here; the garment workers and the
waitresses. We intend to make a canvass of the stores and meet
the clerks personally and to get into all the factories, as far as
possible, where women are employed, and urge these western
women voters to stand by the working women of the East.
Tonight we have our first open-air meeting.

In the Suffragist of October 31, Gertrude Hunter writes
of the campaign in Wyoming:

The meeting last Saturday night was most encouraging. It
was a stormy night, and we went in an auto twenty miles from
here, through snow banks, and every other difficulty to a rally
at a branch home. This was at Grand Canon, and a strongly
Democratic precinct. Every one was wildly enthusiastic over the
meeting, even the Democratic women telling me how much they
appreciated our position. We had a dance immediately after,
and I danced with the voters (male) until one-thirty in the
morning, when we were all taken to the railroad station in a
lumber wagon and four-horse team, a distance of a mile and a
half, and came in on a train at two-thirty a.m. I sold twenty
Suffragists and could have disposed of more if I had had them
with me.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights we have big meetings
scheduled.

We are now at Egbert on our regular schedule, and in such a
snowstorm as I never saw before. However, we have had a
good morning in spite of it.

This town is like the others, consisting of a station, a store,
and post-office. Not a residence in the place. The people all
drove from miles around in a high wind and most unfavorable
weather to attend the meeting.

We had the thirty-five mile drive to make to a neighboring
town for another meeting and we did it every mile through a
high wind and torrents of rain, that flooded the trail with water,
as we went over prairie and plowed fields. We did it, how-

FIRST APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 81

ever, with only one blow-out, and two very narrow escapes from
being completely turned over, getting in at two this morning.

Tomorrow night I shall go to Campstool, where there is a big
supper and dance.

I had another very interesting meeting this week at a town
fifty miles from here. The " town " consists of a station, the
post-office, general store, and a little restaurant; no houses, and
only one or two families living there. The meeting was in the
school-house and the voters came from miles and miles to attend,
at least one hundred and fifty of them, on horseback, in wagbns,
buggies, and autos. Every one was much interested. The min-
ister, at whose house I was entertained for the afternoon, lived
two and one-half miles out in the country, said afterward that
the meeting was a thrill to most of them, who had never heard
a Suffrage speech in their lives.

These are the solid voters of the community. Many are from
the eastern States who are homesteading here. I distributed
the literature to every one.

I will probably reach the same number of voters every day
this week, or perhaps a few more, as the next- town we are going
into. Burns, is a trifle larger than Hillsdale.

Miss Brandeis is going from house to house in Cheyenne, dis-
tributing our literature and soliciting memberships.

The campaign over, four of these victorious campaigners
were welcomed home on the afternoon of November 16,
by an enormous audience at the Columbia Theatre in Wash-
ington :

Mrs. Latimer said:

The very first thing they said to us in Kansas was, " Well,
you are a long way from home ! " and we thought so too.

Kansas, as you know, is a very large State and is an agricul-
tural State, and the consequence was that we had to get in
touch with all the farmers and so it was necessary for us to do
a great deal of traveling.

After we had established our Headquarters we interviewed the
Kansas City Star, one of the largest papers in the State. After
we had talked with the associate editor and told him what our
plan was, that we intended to send a daily bulletin to the eight
hundred and eight papers in the State of Kansas, that we were
going to every one of the large towns in the State of Kansas,
and have just as many meetings as possible, and that we would

82 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

distribute fifty thousand pieces of literature, he looked at us
and said, " Do you realize that this will take eight men and
eighteen stenographers?" I said, "Possibly, but two women
are going to do it." And two women did do it. The result of
that interview was a two and a half column editorial on the
editorial page of the Star. It was the first time that an inter-
view with a woman had ever appeared on the editorial page,
and they told us that even Mr. Bryan had not received two and
a half columns on that page. All of our bulletins were very
well published after the Kansas City Star had taken up our
cause. The women of Kansas co-operated with us, and the Pro-
gressives and Republicans invited us to speak at their big rallies.
Strange as it may seem no one seemed to thiAk we were on the
wrong track but the Democrats.

After we had been there for a while we found that the main
contest was the Senatorial fight, and so we figured out just how
we could keep Mr. Neely out of the Senate. Every one said
that as Mr. Murdock was running as a Progressive, and Mr.
Curtis as a Republican, it would divide the vote and give the
victory to the Democratic Party. We knew that Mr. Neely had
received a very large vote from his own district when he ran
for Congiress — over four thousand majority. So we made up
our minds that the thing to do was to reduce the vote in his own
district. We 'thought that this would help to defeat Mr. Neely,
and it did. He received from his own district a majority of only
eight hundred; that is, the Democratic majority went down to
eight bundred from four thousand. In many of the other dis-
tricts, his majority was still lower. Mr. Taggart, who had a
three thousand majority two years ago, went down to three hun-
dred, and Miss Trax was largely responsible for that. We have
letters from many of the leading politicians of Kansas saying
that our work has been most effective. We have felt all through
Kansas that our work was very encouraging.

We had many interesting things happen. The second day we
were in the Seventh District we held seven meetings. Six meet-
ings had been planned, but after we reached Dodge City we
found there was a political meeting in progress out on the
prairie and they telephoned in and asked one of us to come out
there and speak to them. If any of you have ever been to
Kansas, you know they have schools everywhere, though for
miles and miles you never see a house and you wonder where
the children come from to go to the schools. At eleven o'clock
at night we arrived at the schoolhouse where the meeting was
held, and found three hundred people waiting to hear a Suffrage

FIRST APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 83

speech. After the meeting the women came up and said, " That
is just what we need. We are glad to help the Eastern women,
but we do not know anything about it. We are so glad you have
come to tell us these things because we did not' know them.

The men in the West feel the same way. When I was waiting
for a freight train about five o'clock in the morning, a man came
up and said, " My wife was at your meeting yesterday afternoon,
and I thought I would tell you that I have voted the Democratic
ticket for forty years, but I have voted it the last time." That
is the spirit of the men. Because they respect their women out
there, they do not like to feel that the men in the East and the
Democratic Party do not consider the woman movepaent. People
would come in and say, " Well, you are on the right track now,"
and that seems to be the spirit everywhere in Kansas.

Miss Pincus said:

I am sorry I cannot come to you with the air of a conquering
hero, but I am sure that any person who understands the situa-
tion in Arizona will acknowledge that the purpose of our cam-
paign was accomplished. Despite the fact that the Democrats
were in control — ^had all the money in the State and 9wned
nearly all the newspapers — a Democratic leader came to my
offide one day and told me that the Democrats were absolutely
sure that the women of Arizona would defeat Smith. He said
the Democratic Party was scared to death. It was most amusing.
Every candidate who was running, even for State and County
offices, felt it necessary to declare that he had always believed
in Woman Suffrage, that his mother had believed in Woman
Suffrage and that his grandmother believed in it. I suppose you
know what action our friends Senator Smith and Congressman
Hayden took. Both of them telegraphed from Washington to
the Democratic State Convention in session at Phcenix and
pledged themselves absolutely to support national Woman Suf-
frage. Mr. Hayden stood up on the floor of the House and
filled three pages of the Congressional Record on his attitude
on Woman Suffrage and Arizona was simply flooded with this
copy.

The women, we found, were very open to reason, and one thing
I had not expected to find was how chivalrous all the men were.
I have never been so overwhelmed with courtesy and chivalry
as I was out in Arizona. Every candidate from every county
came into our Headquarters to shake hands and say what a nice
day it was and how he had always been in favor of Woman

84 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Suffrage. Each political Party in Arizona claims absolute
credit for Woman Suffrage out there. To me, coming from a
plain campaign State, New York, it was most encouraging to
find all the men such good Suffragists, and I would like to turn
all anti-Suffragists into a Suffrage State to let them see how
women are treated at election time.

Mrs. Helena Hill Weed said:

I am very glad to be able to report that no Democrat will
come to the United States Senate or House of Representatives
from Idaho — and the Congressional Union had a hand in it.

We do not claim entire responsibility for the large Republican
victory, but we do claim the credit for turning many hundreds
of votes from the Democratic Party. When I reached Idaho I
found the question simmered down to the Senatorial race. The
two candidates were Senator Brady, Republican, and ex-
Governor Hawley, who was running on the Democratic ticket.

I began by sending out copies of all of our literature and the
current number -of the Suffragist to every editor, club woman,
minister, or other person of influence. I began with a meeting
which was organized by the working women in the hotel where
I was stopping. I told them of our work and what it meant.
Many of the women had worked in the East and they knew
what conditions were among the laboring women there, and they
said they never before realized that they could do anything to
help the women in the East. About three days after the meet-
ing a woman came into my office and said, " I want to tell you,
Mrs. Weed, that that meeting is going to bring out at least two
hundred Republican votes in my ward which are never cast, and
is going to turn many more." I positively could not fiU the
requests that were made to speak and explain the Congressional
Union policy. Men and women of the labor unions were much
enthused over our work and we won hundreds and hundreds of
votes simply because our policy was non-partisan.

We put it straight up to Mr. Hawley that an indorsement of
President Wilson's administration meant the indorsement of the
administration's refusal to allow a discussion and a vote on
Suffrage. We put it up to him that it made no difference how
good a Suffragist he personally might be, if he ran on a platform
which contained, as did his, a blanket indorsement of all of
President Wilson's policies, including his refusal to allow a dis-
cussion and a vote on Suffrage. We pointed out to him that his
personal belief in Suffrage was of little avail to us if he could

FIRST APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 85

not or would not bring the Party which he was supporting to
cease its hostility to our Amendment. We reminded him of the
Democratic Congressmen from Suffrage States who had sat in
the Sixty-third Congress and who had professed a deep interest
in Suffrage but who had accomplished nothing as far as actually
bringing Suffrage to pass was concerned, because of the con-
tinued hostility of the Democratic Party which was in control of
all branches of the Government. We told him that we felt duty
bound to make known to the women voters the hostile record
of his national Party on Woman Suffrage, and to ask them to
refuse their support to that Party until it ceased blocking our
Amendment.

They understood the point very quickly and saw that as far
as the individual was concerned there was nothing to choose
from between Mr. Hawley and Senator Brady — both were
equally good Suffragists, as far as their personal stand wa's con-
cerned. It was only when it came to considering their Party
affiliations that one could discriminate between them. We always
emphasized the fact that we were not indorsing the Republican,
the Progressive, the Socialist, or the Prohibition Party, but were
merely asking the women to refuse support to the Party which
had the power to give Suffrage and which up to the present had
used its power only to block that measure. We explained that
we -would have opposed any of the other Parties, had they pos-
sessed the power which the Democratic Party possessed, and had
they used that power in the same obstructive way.

I am absolutely sure that the Congressional Union has the
right policy for us to follow and that through this policy we are
going to win the passage of the Federal Amendment.

Incidentally the referendum in 1914 in Nevada and Mon-
tana gave Suffrage to women.

Although the Congressional Union never deviated from its
policy of devoting itself to -the Federal Amendment, yet it
was deeply interested in the success of these referendum cam-
paigns and gave aid when it seemed needed. The Congres-
sional Union sent Mabel Vernon, a national organizer, to help
in the Nevada campaign. At the close of the campaign an
enthusiastic audience welcomed Mabel Vernon home.

Miss Vernon said:

In the West they do not have the feeling that Suffrage is an
old, old story. They were very willing to go to a Suffrage meet-

86 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

ing, particularly in the mining camps, where to advertise that
a woman is going to speak is almost enough to cause them to
close down the mines in order that they might hear her. This
summer Miss Martin, the State president, and I went all over
the State in a motor, traveling about three thousand miles. We
would travel sometimes one hundred and twenty miles in order
to reach a little settlement of about one hundred people, sixty
voters perhaps. We had the conviction that if Suffrage was
going to win in Nevada, it was going to win through the votes
of those people who lived in the remote places. We knew Reno.
We knew it well. We knew it was not to be counted upon as
giving any majority in favor of Suffrage. That was the object
of the motor trip this sununer.

We traveled for miles and miles without seeing one sign of
life. There was only the sand, the sage-bush, and the sky.
Even though we did not arrive until ten o'clock at night at the
place where we were to speak, we always found our crowd
waiting for us. There was one mining camp, one of the richest
camps there now, where the men said, " We will give you ninety
per cent, ladies, there is not a bit of doubt about it." When
the returns came in from that camp, there were eleven votes
against it and one hundred and one for it. The politicians
laughed at us because we were so confident. " Don't you appre-
ciate that many men who promised to vote for you just want
to make you feel good and haven't any intention of doing it? "
they would say. When the returns came in I took a great deal
of satisfaction in showing them that the men had kept their
promises.

The position that Nevada has geographically had a great deal
to do with it: We made a house-to-house canvass to find out if
the majority were in favor of Suffrage and we found that women
out there would say, " Of course I believe in Suffrage ; I used to
vote myself in Idaho." One woman told me, " I feel very much
out of place here in Nevada because I haven't the right to vote.
I voted for years in Colorado." It would have been an easy
thing to prove that at least seventy-five per cent of the women
in Nevada were in favor of Woman Suffrage. When the men
said, " We are willing that Nevada women shall have the vote
when the majority of them want it," we could say that the
majority of the women in the State of Nevada do want it.

CONGRESS TAKES UP THE SUFFRAGE
AMENDMENT

The effect of this campaign — ^the first of the kind in the
history of the United States — ^was as though acid had been
poured into the milk of the Democratic calm and security.
Within a few days of the appearance of the Congressional
Union speakers, the Democratic papers were full of attacks
on the Congressional Union. The following from the
Wyoming Leader of October 6 is typical of the way the
Democratic papers handled the Congressional Union
workers :

Monday afternoon, they desecrated a charitable gathering of
the Ladies' Hospital Aid. . . . If it was nothing more than
the harmless effort of a couple of women to earn some Con-
gressional coin, it might be overlooked, and these two women
with fatherly tenderness, told to go back home. But it involves
an insult to the intelligent citizenship of this State. It attempts
to compromise and bring into disrepute the practical workings
of Woman Suffrage in this, the original Suffrage State. '• It pro-
poses to prostitute religion, charity, fraternity, and society itself,
to the ambition of a place-and-plunder-hunting politician. These
women go into gatherings to insult and outrage harmony and
good-will among women who themselves avoid politics in their
meetings.

They could not have selected a meeting at which it was so
plainly out of place as a meeting of hospital workers. These
women had gathered together to promote the good work of mercy
and charity in our community. They were Republicans, Pro-
gressives, and Democrats in their preferences. . . .

The editor of the Leader has met and talked with these two
women and believes they do not realize the insult they are
offering to the women of Wyoming.

88 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

The Republican papers of course instantly came to the
rescue of the Congressional Union organizers. The
Cheyenne Trihvne said editorially on October 16:

Democratic newspapers like the Wyoming Leader are finding
fault with the Woman Suffrage Congressional Union for sending
representatives into this State to work against the Democratic
candidate for Congress.

This is a free country, and Wyoming a Woman Suffrage State,
and if worthy, respectahle women come into Wyoming, the first
State to grant the franchise to women, and conduct a decent
campaign for the principles of Woman Suffrage, they should be
treated courteously and given a respectful hearing.

They rightly hold the Democratic Party responsible for its
self-evident opposition to the cause of Woman Suffrage, and
rightly are seeking to defeat Democratic candidates for Congress
by endeavoring to get woman voters to vote against them.

As to the actual effects, I quote from the report of the
Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage for the year
1914:

One of the strongest proofs of the results accomplished in
Washington was given when Judge W. W. Black, Democratic
candidate for the United States Senate, called at the head-
quarters of the Congressional Union in Seattle, and urged the
organizers in charge, in the words of the Seattle Sunday Times,
" to go home and wage a campaign for female Suffrage, and
let the Democratic Congressional candidates in this State alone.
Judge Black disclaimed personal interest," continued the Seattle
Times, " and insisted that his is merely a fatherly concern for
the two young Suffrage leaders. To demonstrate that he was
not concerned personally. Judge Black told the two workers
that he was going to be elected, anyway."

Shortly before election day. Democratic leaders in Colorado
formed a Democratic woman's organization for the purpose of
actively combating the Congressional Union's work among the
women voters.

Further striking evidence of the importance which the Demo-
cratic lieaders of Colorado attached to the Union's activities was
furnished by a leaflet sent far and wide through the State, issued
from the Colorado Democratic State Headquarters, under the
names of Wellihgton H. Gates, Leo U. Guggenheim, and John

THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 89

T. Barnett, National Democratic Committeemen. The leaflet
began: " Permit us to call your attention to the apparent aims
and purposes of the organization calling itself The Congressional
Union."

It then devoted four pages to letters and statements opposing
the policy of the Union, and ended with an appeal to the women
voters to elect the Democratic candidates for Congress " with
larger majorities than ever before, to show the world that the
Democratic women of Colorado are not only loyal, but consistent,
voters."

This was the last leaflet sent to the voters by the State Demo-
cratic Committee. From the first word to the last, it dealt only
with the Congressional Union. Could better evidence be desired
of the important part which the Democrats themselves felt that
Suffrage was playing in the election?

Nowhere did the Congressional Union election work arouse
greater opposition than in Utah. " Intimidation, coercion, and
what were equivalent to threats of political banishment from the
State of Utah," said the Republican Herald of Salt Lake City
(October 15), " were exercised toward Miss Elsie Agnes Lan-
caster, the New York Suffragist, by W. R. Wallace, the Demo-
cratic geneiralissimo, and his gang of political mannikins."

" They invited Miss Lancaster," the Herald continued, " to
come to Democratic State Headquarters, and there kept her on
the grill for two and a half hours. This term of cross-examina^
tion, during which she was under fire of cross-questioning and
denunciation from practically all of the Democratic politicians
present, was a vain endeavor to have her bring to an immediate
close her campaign against the Democratic nominees for the
United States Senate and Congress. For two hours and a half,
the hundred pounds of femininity withstood the concentrated
cross-fire of the ton of beef and brawn represented by the dozen
or more distinguished Democrats who acted as attorney, judge,
and jury all in one. After they had finished, she went her way,
telling Mr. Wallace that neither he nor his hirelings could
swerve her from her duty in Utah as a representative of this
Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.

" The greatest outburst of Generalissimo Wallace," concludes
the Herald, " was when, in a moment of rage, he brought his
fist down on the table and threatened to advertise Miss Lan-
caster the country over by means of the Associated Press as
being in league with ' sinister influences ' in Utah."

One of the candidates for Congress from Kansas (Represen-
tative Doolittle) called at the Washington Headquarters of the

90 THE STORY OP THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Union shortly after the inangiiration of work in Kansas, and
urged the Union to withdraw its campaigners from his district,
at least, if not over all the Western States. Finding the Union
determined to continue its opposition through the women voters,
as long as his Party continued its opposition to the National
Amendment, Mr. Doolittle delivered a speech in the House of
Representatives (occupying more than a page of the Con-
gressional Record), denouncing the Union, and assuring the
members of Congress that its appeal to the women voters was
not authorized by the Suffragists of the country.

Representative Hayden of Arizona also endeavored, in a
speech in the House, to answer the appeal of the Congressional
Union to the Western women to cast their votes against him,
together with the other national Democratic candidates. Nearly
three pages of the Record was consumed by Mr. Hayden's speech,
which he reprinted, and sent far and wide through the State of
Arizona in an attempt to counteract the havoc which it was ap-
parently believed was being wrought by the Congressional Union
workers.

A prominent Democratic candidate for the Arizona Legisla-
ture testified to the fear which the Union campaign had aroused
among the Democratic element in that State by an appeal to
Dr. Cora Smith King, a member of the Advisory Council of the
Congressional Union, urgently imploring her to use her influence
with the Union to terminate its election activities in Arizona.
Dr. King replied : " The more the local Democrats complain, the
more they advertise the slogan of the Congressional Union, that
the Democrats put Suffrage second to Party. Do, for Heaven's
sake, raise the Democratic roof in Washington for involving you
in this dilemma."

Among the concrete results showing the effectiveness of the
Congressional Union election activities was the inclusion of a
Federal Suffrage Amendment plank' in the platforms of each
of the State parties in Colorado, the first time that this occurred
in that State, and the inclusion of a similar plank in the Arizona
Democratic platform.

Another result was the conversion of Senator Smith of Arizona
to a belief in the Federal Amendment. On September 28,
Senator Smith and Representative Hayden, the two Democratic
candidates who were running for Congress from Arizona, sent
the following telegram to Mrs. Frances Munds, candidate for
State Senatorship on the Democratic ticket: " Our record in Con-
gress shows that we are for National Woman Suffrage. If you
think best, offer as plank in State platform the following: 'We

THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 91

pledge our candidates for United States Senator and Repre-
sentative in Congress to vote at all times for National Woman
Suffrage.'"

The Democratic Committee adopted and strengthened this
platform.

All candidates, indeed, seemed to develop a marked increase
in the fervor of their allegiance to the Suffrage Amendment.
Senator Chamberlain of Oregon^ in his last edition of street-car
cards before election day, headed his poster with a declaration
of his support of National Woman Suffrage as the leading argu-
ment for his re-election.

Not only the Congressional candidates, but minor Democratic
workers, suddenly developed unsuspected interest in the cause of
Woman Suffrage. Said the Examiner of Yuma, Arizona (Oc-
tober 24, 1914), in commenting on the situation: " We view with
amazement the efforts of the Democratic bosses to be in favor
of Equal Suffrage."

And so in each of the States.

No more conclusive proof of the support given by the women
voters to the Union's campaign could be afforded than the
readiness with which they became members and active workers.

In undertaking the election campaign, the Union had expected
that in the beginning only the humble members of the rank and
file would respond to its appeal. It had fully realized that the
rank and file are more easily reached by new work than .are the
leaders. It was with amazement, therefore, as well as gratifica-
tion that it greeted the co-operation of the leading women voters
of the West. Their willingness to subordinate Party interest
to the National Suffrage cause furnished the strongest assurance
of the ispeedy organization of the women's vote to such a power
as to make it a determining factor in the outcome of things at
Washington.

The rank and file, however, equalled the leaders in the en-
thusiasm with which they supported the campaign. Women who
had never before been active in Suffrage work were aroused to
an effective support of the Congressional Union's policy. Said
the Tribune of Pendleton, Oregon (October 16), for instance,
in commenting on this situation:

" Large numbers of women who had not even registered until
the campaign of the Congressional Union began, have made it
their duty to do so in order that they may cast their ballot on
this one issue alone. They had not been especially interested
in the general political campaign, but seeing the opportunity to

92 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

assist in the enfranchisement of other women, they have come
bravely to the front with offers of assistance."

One of the illuminating features of the campaign was the aid
given to the Union in its election work by prominent Democratic
women. This support came from the Democratic women of the
East as well as of the West. For example, Mrs. George A.
Armes, President of the District of Columbia Branch of the
National Wilson and Marshall League, wrote to the Chairman
of the Union during the election days : " I have come to the
conclusion that the greatest service I can render to the National
Democratic Party is to help to bring it to realize that true
democracy involves Suffrage for women as well as for men. I
know that it will come to a realization of the truth if it sees
that it can no longer count upon the women's vote in the West
if it opposes the Suffrage Amendment. I am, therefore, heartily
with the election campaign of the Congressional Union in its
appeal to the women voters to cast their votes against all Demo-
cratic candidates for Congress."

Women voted in the election for forty-five members of
Congress. The Democratic Party ran candidates for forty-
three members in these States. The Congressional Union
opposed all these candidates. Out of the forty-three Demo-
cratic candidates, only twenty were elected. In some of
these districts undoubtedly the women affected these results.

I quote the same report:

Basing our estimate on the charges made by friends of the
candidates whom we were forced, by reason of the action of
their Party, to oppose, the Congressional Union campaign de-
feated Representative Neely of Kansas, Mr; Flegel of Oregon,
and Representative Seldomridge of Colorado; and contributed
in large measure to the defeat of Mr. Hawley of Idaho, Mr.
James H. Moyle of Utah, and Mr. Roscoe Drumheller of Wash-
ington, and greatly lessened the majorities of Senator Smith of
Arizona, Senator Thomas, and Mr. Keating of Colorado.

The campaign of the Congressional Union accomplished
exactly what its members hoped and expected that it would
accomplish. If their purpose had been merely to unseat Demo-
crats, they would, of course, have taken the districts in the
United States where the Democrats had won by very slight
majorities. When they went into such strongly Democratic
States as Arizona and Colorado, they did not expect to unseat

THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 93

any of the Democratic candidates in those States. Their pur-
pose was to make Woman SufErage an ever-present political
issue in the States where women have political power until all
the women of the United States shall be enfranchised, and to
lay in those States the foundations for permanent and constantly-
growing support of the franchise work at Washington, They
succeeded in making the record of the Democratic Party on
Woman Suffrage (an issue which would not otherwise have been
heard of) widely known and hotly discussed in the Suffrage
States.

In the meantime. Suffrage had come up again and again
in Congress. On October 10, 1914, during discussion of
the Philippine Bill, conferring a greater measure of self-
government on Filipino men, Representative Mann of
Illinois proposed on that date that the franchise measure
in the Bill be so amended as to give the vote to women on
the Islands. This Amendment was lost by a vote of fifty-
eight to eighty-four. On October 12, Representative J. W.
Bryan of Washington, Progressive, proposed three other
Amendments: One, making women eligible to vote in school
elections, which was lost by a vote of eleven to twenty-seven ;
one giving the vote to women property-owners, which was lost
by a vote of nine to twenty-seven, and one giving the Philip-
pine legislature power to extend the right of Suffrage to
women at any future time, which was lost by a vote of eleven
to twenty-seven. The Amendments were defeated by strictly
party votes, the Democrats ^voting almost solidly against
them, while the Progressives and Republicans supported
them.

This Session of Congress adjourned on October 4, 1914.
At its close, the Suffrage Amendment was upon the calendar
of the Senate and the House, ready for a vote. In the
House, however, the Rules Committee must apportion time
for the vote. Mr. Mondell's Resolution providing for this
— and for which successive deputations had besieged the
Rules Committee — was still before the Rules Committee.

The short Session— the last Session of the Sixty-third
Congress — opened on December 7. President Wilson's

94 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

message, read to Congress on December 8, made no mention
of the Woman Suffrage question, though it expressly
recommended the Bill granting further independence to the
men of the Philippines.

In December, therefore, Anne Martin, who had brought
to brilliant victory the campaign in Nevadei, came to the
Congressional Union's Headquarters in Washington. She
called on the President to ask his assistance in furthering
the passage of the Bristow-Mondell Amendment.

In referring to the victory in Nevada, the President said :
" That is the way I believe it should come, by States."

Miss Martin then pointed out to the President the im-
mense difficulties involved in State campaigns. She said:
" The referendum campaigns are killing work, and the
women of America are working for the passage of this
Federal Amendment in order to end the long struggle."

Miss Martin referred to the President's attitude toward
the Filipinos. She said she had read with interest that
part of his message to Congress in which he advocated a
larger measure of self-government for them. She pointed
out that Suffragists were asking for an extension of the
same right to American women, and urged him to give equal
support to the Amendment enfranchising his country-
women.

The Congressional Union began to send deputations to
the refractory Rules Committee, immediately upon the
retqrn of the Committee members to Washington. On
December 9, Mrs. William Kent and Mrs. Gardner called
upon Chairman Henry as soon as he reached the city. To
their great astonishment, they were promptly assured by
Mr. Henry that the. Rules Committee would report favorably
House Resolution No. 514 — providing time for the consid-
eration of the Suffrage Amendment in the House — which
had been before it since May 13.

" Mr. Henry said," says the Suffragist of December 12, " that
he had always desired to make a favorable report of the Suffrage

THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 95

rules certain 'sinister influences,' however, working upon some
of the members of this Committee had made it impossible
for the Committee to take action upon it during the last
Session. Mr. Henry did not state what the ' sinister influences '
were, nor why they had been removed immediately after the
election."

He also assured representatives of the Union that the
Rules Committee would shortly bring the Amendment to a
vote in the House.

" There is every reason to believe," said Mrs. Gilson Gard-
ner commenting on Mr. Henry's glib change of front, " that
the Party leaders have met and studied the Democratic re-
turns from the campaign States."

On January 12, the Resolution on the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment was debated for over six hours in the House
and voted upon the same day. One hundred and seventy-
four votes were cast for the Amendment, two hundred and
four against it. Forty-six members were recorded as not
voting. Of the forty-six, twelve were paired in favor, and
six paired' against it. The Amendment thus failed by
seventy-eight votes of the necessary two-thirds.

It is a favorite trick with politicians to bring up the
Amendment in the short session of a dying Congress. They
can vote no and still have a chance, in the new Congress,
to redeem themselves before election.

The Suffragist of January 23 quotes some of the reasons
for opposing the Amendment:

That Woman Suffrage cannot be supported because of a man's
respect, admiration, and reverence for womanhood.

That five little colored girls marched in a Suffrage parade in
Columbus, Ohio.

That women must be protected against themselves. They
think they want to vote. As a matter of fact, they do not want
to vote, and man, being aware of this fact, is obliged to prevent
them from getting the ballot that they do not want

That the ballot would degrade women.

That no man would care to marry a Suffragist.

That women do not read newspapers on street cars.

96 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

That women do not buy newspapers of Ikey Oppenstein, who
keeps the stand on the corner.

That no man would care to marry a female butcher.

That no man would care to marry a female policeman.

That Woman Suffrage is a matter for the States to determine.

That Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch once marched in a proces-
sion in which she carried a banner inscribed, " One million So-
cialists vote and work for Sufifrage."

That Inez MilhoUand married a Belgian and once referred
to a cabinet-officer as a joke.

That women fail to take part in the " duty of organized
murder " and might therefore vote against war.

PART TWO

1915-1916

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL TO THE
PRESIDENT AND TO CONGRESS

The new — the Sixty-fourth — Congress did not meet until
December in 1915. This is the first and only summer in
President Wilson's administration in which Congress was
not in session. Normally, Congress meets every other sum-
mer, but President Wilson has called three special sessions
in the alternate years. In consequence, that year in Wash-
ington is less full than others with work with Congress or
the President. In the meantime, however, the Congressional
Union did not permit the people of the United States to
forget the Suffrage fight.

Alice Paul now felt that it was necessary to swing in
the support of the country back of the Suifrage demand
for the Federal Amendment. She felt that this could only
be accomplished by a nation-wide organization which, dis-
sipating no energy in State work, would focus on Congress.

At a meeting of the Advisory Council in New York City
on Wednesday, March 31, she outlined plans for the coming
year. She said in part:

We want to organize in every State. in the Union. We will
begin this by holding in each State a Convention on the same
lines as this Conference, at which we will explain our purposes,
our plans, and our ideals. At each of these Conferences, the
members will select a State Chairman, who will appoint a Chair-
man of each of the Congressional constituencies in her State.
■ Each Convention will also adopt a plan of State organization,
suited to the needs of their locality. Each Convention too will
send Representatives to a culminating Convention of women
voters, to be held at San Francisco during the course of the
Panama-Pacific Exposition, on September 14th, 15th, and l6th.
At this first Convention of women voters to be held on their own

100 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

territory in behalf of the National Suffrage Amendment, dele-
gates will be appointed to go to Washington, D. C, the week
Congress opens, to lay before their Representatives and the
leaders of the majority Party in Congress, the demand of women
voters for the national enfranchisement of women. During the
opening week in Congress, too, the pageant on the life of Susan
B. Anthony, along the lines which Hazel Mackaye has just out-
lined to you, will be given. We want to make Woman Suffrage
the dominant political issue from the moment Congress recon-
venes. We want to have Congress open in the midst of a ver-
itable Suffrage cyclone.

During the Sixty-third Congress, we have been able, with very
little organized support, to force action on the Federal Suffrage
Amendment. When we have an active body of members in every
State in the Union uniting in this demand, I believe that we will
be able to get our Amendment passed.

The organization of the various State Conventions pro-
gressed rapidly from week to week. An incredible amount
of work was done — and done with the swift, broad, slashing
strokes which always characterized the Congressional Union
work. This, of course, brought the Congressional Union
into prominence everywhere; but the eye of the coun-
try was held by a new type of demonstration which, fol-
lowing her genius for picturesque publicity, Alice Paul
immediately began to produce. The stage was the entire
United States of America, and the leading woman in the
— one would almost call it a pageant — was Sara Bard Field
of California. The prologue opened at the Panama-Pacific
Exposition of 1916.

Through Mrs. Kent an exhibit booth for the Congressional
Union for Woman Suffrage was secured in the Educational
Building at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The Record of
the Sixty-third Congress was exhibited there, and the people
in chai'ge invited detailed inspection from visitors. All
American visitors were asked to look up the record of their
Congressman, to discover, how he voted on the Suffrage
Amendment : they were asked to sign the monster petition to
Congress. This booth, always decorated with purple, white,
and gold, was to become during the year the scene of meeting

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 101

after meeting; all characterized by the picturesqueness
which would inevitably emerge from a combination of the
Congressional Union with California.

Sara Bard Field, in the Suffragist of September 11, thus
describes it:

A world passes by. It looks reverently at the firmly-sweet
face of Susan B. Anthony, whose portrait hangs upon the wall.
It scans the record of the vote of the Sixty-third Congress.
... It peers with curious smiles at the brief array of lady
dolls which mutely proclaim the voting and non-voting States
for women, and the forces which prevent Suffrage. . . .

The first California Conference of the Congressional
Union was held in San Francisco June 1 and 2. Every
part of the State and every political Party was represented
at the gathering. Florence Kelley, National Secretary of
the Consumers' League, appealed to the women of the West
for aid in the battle of Eastern women for Suffrage in the
following eloquent words:

I come from a State in which women have been trying to
get Suffrage for twenty-seven years. We are forced to come to
you women of California and ask you to stand behind us; and
we are thankful that California has re-enlisted for Suffrage.
Women in California have talked to me about the ease with
which they won Suffrage, and praise their men-folk. I would
like to say there was nothing the matter with my father. He
was a Suffragist. There is nothing the matter with our men
in the State of New York. Our trouble is with the steerage.
They inundate our shores year after year. We slowly assimilate
and convert; but each year there is the same work to do over
— ^the same battle with ignorance and foreign ideas of freedom
and the " place of woman."

Mrs. Kelley gave instance after instance of the humilia-
tion to which women working on the New York Suffrage
petition had been put by naturalized foreign residents. She
pointed out the curious, paradoxical inconsistency of grant-
ing foreigners the vote, and yet denying it to American
women.

102 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

She described with a real dramatic effect the incident of
the President's trip to Philadelphia, when he welcomed a
great army of naturalized immigrants, and denied a hearing
to American women.

" There are some of our men," she conimented, " the me-
chanics of whose minds we do not miderstand. George Wash-
ington, you may remember, in Woodrow Wilson's History of
the United States, had no mother."

Mrs. Kelley told of the battle women, themselves sworn
to enforce the law, have to fight if they are without the
ballot. She went into her experiences as a voteless citizen
of Illinois, when she was a factory inspector there.

Eastern women have been degraded by sixty-eight years of
beggary. They have begged of the steerage; they have begged
of politicians; now they find it possible to come West and ask
the co-operation of their own sisters. But I come to you with
a nobler argument when I ask you to support the work of the
Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Do not do it for
us, even though we have borne the rigor and heat of the day in
the long fight for enfranchisement. Do it for the children of
the future: let them come into a noble heritage through us.

The climax of this Conference came the final day when,
at the Inside Inn ball-room of the Exposition, the repre-
sentatives of the eleven enfranchised States, the Territory
of Alaska and in addition the enfranchised nations, meeting
on the same platform, told what freedom for women had
accomplished in their nations and States. The great ball-
room was decorated with purple, white, and gold banners
of the Union, and massed with golden acacia. Many of the
women representatives wore the costumes of their native
land. Mayi Maki, a Finnish girl typically blonde, in the
striking peasant costume of Finland, spoke. Mrs. Chem
Chi, a Chinese woman, in the no less striking costume of
China, spoke. Representatives of New Zealand, the Isle of
Man, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark spoke.

The Congressional Union celebrated Bunker Hill Day,

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 103

June 17, by another charming occasion. It dedicated to
the Massachusetts exhibit a miniature reproduction of
Bunker Hill monument, thrown into relief by a black-velvet
background, which bore the history of the notable women
of the State.

It was a brilliant day, sunny and clear. The Massa-
chusetts Building, a facsimile of the noble State House of
Boston, situated between the gorgeous bay of San Fran-
cisco and the iridescent Marin shore on the one hand, and
the long line of orientally colored Exposition Buildings on
the other, was decorated for the occasion with the red, white,
and blue of the national flag, and the white of the great
State flag.

A procession of Suffragists, headed by Gail Laughlin,
wearing the purple, white, and gold regalia, and escorted
by a special military band, marched behind a large purple,
white, and gold flag, and between an avenue of purple,
white, and gold flags up to the Massachusetts Building,
where they were confronted by a great banner, bearing the
words of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Gail Laughlin, who was educated in Massachusetts, said
in part:

There were Pilgrim mothers in those days, as well as Pilgrim
Fathers, though they were singularly absent from history. You
will find nothing of them in the schoolbooks; you have to go
to the sources from which histories are made. Then Mary
Warren, advisor of Knox and Adams and Jefferson ; and Hannah
Winthrop and Abigail Adams begin to stand out beside the men
who are said to have made the history of that time. Was it not
Abigail Adams who wrote to her husband at the Continental
Congress when the very document we women are now striving
to change was drawn up : " If you do not free the women of the
nation, there will be another revolution." I consider Abigail
Adams the first member of the Congressional Union for Woman
Suffrage.

There was Julia Ward Howe, the author of The Battle Hymn
of the Republic, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who so largely
helped in the freeing of the slaves ; and Lucy Stone, that staunch
Abolitionist and Suffragist — all closely linked with Massa-

104 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

chusetts' great history. It was Lucy Stone who, when protest
was made that she injected " too much suffrage " into her Abo-
litionist speeches, declared, " I was a woman before I was an
Abolitionist."

Later, at a mass-meeting of the CcQgressional Union,
Maud Younger, who, in Washington, was to become so stead-
fast a worker for the Congressional Union, spoke. Maud
Younger is one of the most picturesque of the many pic-
turesque figures among the native daughters of California:
a student of economic conditions ; a feminist ; much traveled ;
an ex-president qf the Waitresses' Union; her life is as
inextricably mixed with the Labor and Suffrage history of
California as later it was bound with the Woman's Party.
On this occasion, she said:

The burden of the women of the unenfranchised States, their
struggles, is ours more than it ever was; our freedom is not our
own while they are unenfranchised. I realized in the East that
we women can spend a lifetime for Suffrage, if we continue to
work State by State only. Do you realize that, since we won
our vote in California, Ohio has been twice defeated, and Michi-
gan twice defeated? ... I heard Frank P. Walsh, Chairman
of the Industrial Railways Commission, say in Washington:
" The ballot for women will only come through the persistent
and unremitting effort of the women in the free States."

Maud Younger was followed by Andrew Gallagher, equally
important, and equally as picturesque a figure among the
Native Sons of California. Mr. Gallagher is an ex-
champion amateur heavyweight of the Pacific Coast; a
labor leader; a power in California politics. He said in
part : \

In those days when Suffrage hopes were dark in California,
Labor stood by women; as we stood for State Suffrage, so now
we stand for National Suffrage. If Labor can help to bring
about the passage of the National Woman Suffrage Amendment;,
then Labor will put its shoulder to the wheel, and do all in its
power to force its adoption.

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 105

The Political Convention of Woman Voters held in San
Francisco in September at the Panama-Pacific Exposition,
carried out all these traditions of picturesque^ess. Mrs.
O. H. P. Belmont opened the Convention. Mrs. Fremont
Older, the novelist, spoke. Dr. Yami Kin, the first woman
physician in China — ^bringing to the event a picturesque
touch of internationalism by wearing a pale blue brocaded
mandarin coat — spoke in excellent English. Mme. Ali Kuli
Khan, the wife of the Persian Minister, and Mme. Maria
Montessori, the famous Italian physician and educator, also
spoke.

Mrs. Belmont said:

We women of the North, of the South and of the East,
branded on account of sex, disfranchised as criminals and im-
beciles, come to the glorious West, where the broad vision of its
men has seen justice.

Mrs. Older said:

I thought that Woman Suffrage was like Utopia ; when women
were good enough to vote, the men would give it to them; but
I have learned that Utopias are not given away; they must be
fought for.

Dr. Yami Kin said:

All countries look to North and West for inspiration and help
in their march toward freedom.

JVime. Montessori said:

We have watched individual States in your country give justice
to women, one by one. Now we are waiting for the United
States to declare its women free.

The Convention passed Resolutions calling upon the
Sixty-fourth Congress to vote for the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment. Sara Bard Field and Frances Joliffe were
selected as envoys to carry the Resolution across the country

106 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

to Congress. A plan was made for the envoys to travel
slowly eastward, holding meetings and collecting signatures
to the petition; arriving in Washington the day Congress
assembled. Mabel Vernon acted as advance guard for this
expedition and was more responsible than anybody eke for
its success.

The final ceremony of the Convention took place in the
Court of Abundance on the night of the day which had been
designated by the directors of the Exposition as the Con-
gressional Union for Woman Suffrage Day. On that eve-
ning, Mr. M. H. DeYoung, on behalf of the directors of the
Exposition, presented Mrs. Belmont for the Congressional
Union with a bronze medal in recognition of the work of the
Congressional Union. Ten thousand people gathered there
to witness it. They listened rapt to the speeches, and then
— flighting their way by thousands of golden lanterns — ac-
companied the envoys to the gates.

The national Suffrage Edition of the Scm Francisco
BvMetm, edited by Mrs. O. H. F. Belmont, assisted by Doris
Stevens as city editor, Mrs. John Jay White as art editor
and Alice Faul as telegraph editor, charmingly described
the scene:

The great place was softly and naturally lit except for the
giant tower gate flaiqing aloft in the white lights which focnssed
on it as on some brilliant altar. Far below, like a brilliant
flower bed, filling the terraced side from end to end, glowed the
huge chorus of women, which was one of the features of the
evening. Those at the top — hardly women — ^were the girls of
the Oriental School, from midget size up, in quaintly colorful
nativj; costumes. In the foreground were the Finnish, Swedish,
and Norwegian girls in their peasant costumes, and, stretching
the length of the stage, like a great living flag of the Con-
gressional Union, were massed Union members in surplices of
the organization colors. The effect was one of exotic brilliancy.

Back of the stage, curtaining the great arch, fluttered the red,
white, and blue emblem of the nation that women have sacrificed
as much to upbuild as the men ; but significantly waving with the
Stars and Stripes hung the great Suffrage banner, that ringingly
declared: WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 107

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES ENFRAN-
CHISING WOMEN. And the great crowd in the Court
joined in the swelling song that another band of women across
the sea, fighting for liberty, had originated. Every one was
catching the words:

"Shout, shout, up with your song!
Cry with the wind, for the dawn is breaking.
March, march, swing you along.
Wide blow our banners, and hope is waking."

And then came the envoys, delegated by women voters to
carry the torch of liberty through the dark lands and keep it
burning. And the dark mass below the lighted altar-tower
caught the choristers' spirit, and burst into cheers.

The chorus also sang the Song of the Free Women, written
by Sara Bard Field to the music of the Marseillaise.

The envoys spoke. Their words were greeted with cheers.
One of the nation's greatest actresses, Margaret Anglin, said
a few fitting farewell words to them in the name of the women
of the world.

Then, all at once, the great, brightly-colored picture and its
dark background began to disintegrate and fade. The Court
darkened, but bright masses of women were forming in proces-
sion to escort the envoys to the gates of the Exposition. Orange
lanterns swayed in the breeze; purple, white, and gold draperies
fluttered, the blare of the band burst forth, and the great surging
crowd followed to the gates.

There, Ingeborg Kindstedt and Maria Kindberg, of Provi-
dence, Rhode Island, who had purchased the car that is to take
the crusaders on their long journey, met the procession. The
Overland car was covered with Suffrage streamers. Miss
Kindberg was at the wheel. To the wild cheering of the crowd.
Miss Joliflfe and Mrs. Field, the two envoys for Washington,
were seated. The crowd surged close with final messages.
Cheers burst forth as the gates opened, and the big car swung
through, ending the most dramatic and significant Suffrage Con-
vention that has probably ever been held in the history of the
world.

And so Alice Paul's stupendous pageant — ^whose stage
was the entire United States — opened.

The petition which the envoys were to carry across the
country to Washington was, even when it left California,

108 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

the largest ever signed in one place. It was 18,338 fe«t
long, and contained 500,000 names.

Very soon after the envoys started, President Wilson made
his first declaration for Suffrage. He also went to New
Jersey and voted for it.

Frances Joliffe was called back to California by illness
in her family at the beginning of the journey. Sara Bard
Field, therefore, continued alone across the continent with
her two Swedish convoys. It was a remarkable trip,
filled with unexpected adventure. A long procession of
Mayors and Governors welcomed Mrs. Field in her nation-
wide journey. Everywhere she advertised the Democratic
record in Congress. One of the early mishaps was to get
lost in the desert of Utah. They wandered about for a
whole day, and regained the highway in time to arrive in
Salt Lake City at five o'clock in the afternoon. Later in
Kansas came a more serious mishap. But let Mrs. Field
speak for herself. No better picture can be given of her
picturesque journey than her own reports, published from
time to time in the Suffragist.

From Fallon, Nevada, Mrs. Field wrote:

Here we are in the heart of Nevada's desert, having traveled
already over three hundred and eighty miles of every kind
of country — meadow land, green, luzurious ranches, rolling hill
country, steep mountain grades, the grass lands of the Sierras,
and now through the bare but beautiful desert.

We reached Reno at midnight on Sunday after a vision of the
sublime chaos of the Sierras at night.

At night, from a car flying the Congressional Union colors
and the Amendment banner. Miss Martin and I spoke in the
streets of Reno. The crowd listened with close attention, and
pressed closely about the car to sign the petition.

At noon today, we left Reno for the most trying and perilous
part of our journey. We are traveling across some six hundred
miles of barren land known as the " Great American Desert"
Our next destination is Salt Lake City.

From Salt Lake City, Mrs. Field wrote:

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 109

The State Capitol, where each meeting was held, stands on
a hill. The world is at its feet. The mountains wall the entire
city. . . . While the earth was glowing in the light of a flaming
sunset, and the mountains about stood like everlasting witnesses.
Representative Howell of Utah pledged his full and unqualified
support to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in the coming ses-
sion of Congress.

At Colorado Springs, their reception was almost a
pageant. Marching to music, a procession of women clad
in purple, white, and gold surplices and carrying banners,
accompanied the Suffrage car to the City Hall where they
sang The March of the Women and The Song of the Free
Womek. The Mayor of Colorado Springs greeted them with
a welcoming speech.

In the bogs of southern Kansas, the Suffrage car had an
adventure. The Suffragist says:

Fulling into Hutchinson on Monday evening over muddy
roads, the car plunged suddenly into a deep hole filled with water.
The body of the Flier was almost submerged. The petitioners,
fearing to step out of the car, sat and called " Help ! " into
the darkness of the night until their voices were hoarse. No
response came from the apparently deserted country. But they
knew there was a farmhouse about a mile back. So Sara Bard
Field, little but brave, slipped away from her place on the back
seat; before her companions knew it, was almost up to hei; waist
in slimy mud. Hardly able to pull one foot out of the mud to
plant it ahead of the other, she finally, after a two hours'
struggle, reached the ranch, where the farmer and his son were
roused from their sleep (for it was now midnight) and told of
the women's plight. In a little while, horses were harnessed
and a rescue party was on its way; but not until three o'clock
did the women start toward Hutchinson tired and wet, and cov-
ered with mud.

In Kansas City, Missouri, the Suffragists, accompanied by
a procession of automobiles, impressively long, called first on
Mayor Jost and then on Senator Reed. The difference
between Suffrage and non-Suffrage States became immedi-
ately evident from Mayor Jost's attitude; for, while he
bade the envoys welcome, he declined to state his own con-

110 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

victions on the purposes of their journey. There was no
doubt about Senator Reed's conviction. He had voted
against the Suffrage measure in the last Session. The
women made speeches. In answer, Senator Reed spoke sev-
eral sentences in such a low and indistinct manner that no
one in the crowd that overflowed his office could understand
him, and a man in the delegation called out, " You need
say only one word, Senator." There were more speeches
from the women, and, when Senator Reed saw that some-
thing must be said, he finally declared he " would take the
matter into consideration."

Mrs. Field writing of Missouri, said:

" In the enemy's country," — ^that is what the newspapers said
of our arrival in Missouri, the first non-Su£Erage State we
reached. Such kind, genial, hospitable " enemies." I wish all
enemies were of their disposition. For a whole day and. night,
Kansas City, Missouri, was alive with Suffrage enthusiasm;
great crowds attended our advent everywhere. We never spoke
that whole day, from our noon meeting on the City Hall steps
until the last late street meeting at night, but we had more
people to talk to than our voices could reach. As our auto pro-
cession passed down the street, crowds gathered to see it; and
the windows of every business house and office building were
lined with kindly faces. Often, there was applause and cheers;
when these were lacking, there was a peculiar sort of earnest
curiosity. And, oh the Suffragists! I wish that every western
voting woman who is making a sacrificial effort at all for Na-
tional Suffrage could have seen those grateful women. " The
greatest day for Suffrage Kansas has ever seen," said some of the
older Suffrage workers : " How good of the western women to
come to our aid ! " At the City Club meeting, which was packed,
Mr. Frank P. Walsh predicted National Suffrage in 1916.
There was good fellowship over a Suffrage dinner, and earnest
street meetings afterwards; gravely interested crowds attended,
and the newspapers gave large space. The whole city talked
National Suffrage for at least two days.

At Topeka occurred another adventure. A great crowd
awaited the Suffrage automobile for two hours. But sixty
miles away, afflicted with tire trouble and engine difficulties.

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 111

the car stoQd stationary for those two hours. And all the
time, the valiant Mabel Vernon talked, hoping against hope
that the arrival of the car would interrupt her speech. She
says that in those two hours she talked everything she ever
knew, 'guessed, hoped, or wished for Suffrage.

The Chicago reception was unusually picturesque. En-
thusiasm was heightened by the fact that the women voters
were holding a Convention there, and they added their wel-
come to that of the city.

At eleven o'clock in the morning, fifty automobiles, flying
the Suffrage colors, and filled with Suffrage workers from
all organizations, met Mrs. Field at her hotel. Then the
long line of cars escorted by mounted officers, passed
through the crowded streets to the Art Museum on the wide
Michigan Boulevard. Here was a stage equal in impressive-
ness, although of quite a different kind, to that of the Court
of Abundance, which saw the envoys depart down their
nation-wide trail. Back of them was the great silver-
gray Lake; in front of them, the long line of monolithic
Chicago skyscrapers, grim and weather-blackened; and on
both sides the wide expanses of the Boulevard. The Suf-
frage women, a mass of brilliant color, covered the steps of
the Museum. At the top a chorus of a hundred women
grouped about the band. From the bronze standard in
the center of the steps hung the Amendment banner. And
in their midst, like, as somebody has said — " a brown
autumn leaf blown from the West " — Sara Bard Field in
her simple traveling suit punctuated all that vividness.

Mayor Thompson said:

Speaking for the City of Chicago, which I have the honor to
represent, I can say that we wish you God-speed and much
success in your mission.

He further told Mrs. Field:

We have watched the growth of the Suffrage movement with
great interest, and as you know, we have partial Suffrage in

112 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Illinois. I hope it will not be long before women have full
Suffrage here and throughout the nation.

Mrs. Field replied:

I like Mayor Thompson's way of putting it. At Kansas City
the other day, the Mayor quite flustered me with his speech. He
said so many things about women — for instance, that woman
was a Muse that soared; that she was ^ the poetry of our exist-
ence; and something about the sun, moon, and stars. Then he
added that he did not think women should be allowed to vote.
I think Mayor Thompson's method is much better.

" My recollections yesterday," Mrs. Field wrote to the Suf-
fragist, " are a confused mass of impressions — ^music and cheers
— throngs of men, women, and children — colors flying in the sun-
shine, and great crowds surging and pressing about."

In Indianapolis, there gathered to meet the envoys the
largest street meeting ever held in Indiana in behalf of
Suffrage. The Indianapolis News of November 8 says :

Mrs. Sara Bard Field, brown-eyed and slender, saw men
gather at the curbing in the shadows of the Morton Monument,
on the State House steps, shortly'after noon today — watched them
smile as she began her talk for Woman Suffrage, then saw their
faces grow serious as they stepped nearer. Then she smiled
herself, and her argument poured forth while " old hands " in
the State House coterie and machine politicians stood with open
mouths and drank in her pleadings.

There is only space for glimpses of this picturesque single
pilgrimage from now on to its rception at Washington.
At Detroit, they were welcomed by a glowing evening recep-
tion. A long procession of automobiles, decorated with
yellow flags, yellow pennants, yellow balloons, and illu-
minated yellow lanterns, met them on the outskirts of the
city, and escorted them to the steps of the County Building.
Here four stone urns foamed with red fire. " The scene
was," one of the papers said, '* like pictures of Rome in the
time of the Cassars. ..." In Cleveland, they held an
open-air meeting in the public square in the midst of a whirl-

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 118

ing snowstorm. A drum, a trombone, and a cornet escorted
them — with an effect markedly comic — through the echoing
corridors of the City Hall to the Mayor's office; escorted
them, after the official call, onto the street again. In New
York came their first real accident. On the way to Geneva,
the asde broke. The Rochester motor companies declared it
was impossible to do anything for a day at least ; but Mrs.
Field telephoned to the head office at Toledo, and a new
axle appeared in Rochester at seven o'clock in the evening.
However, the envoys had to drive through cold and a light
fall of snow until half-past one in the morning, in order
to make the meeting at Syracuse the next day. ... In
Albany, preceded by a musical car which played The Battle
Hymn of the Republic, they proceeded to the enormous
Capitol Building, where Governor Whitman, surrounded by
his staff, met them. The Governor was amazed that a
woman had driven the car all the way from San Francisco,
and even more amazed at the size of the envoy. " I
thought you would be six feet tall," he said. ... At
Providence, after a rousing welcome in Boston — where Gov-
ernor Walsh met the envoys, and the enormous crowd which
accompanied them, in the beautiful rotunda of the State
House — the little car, which now registered nearly five
thousand miles of hard travel, was put on the boat, and its
occupants brought to New York City. The weather-beaten
automobile, bearing the slogan on the front, ON TO
CONGRESS!, and on the back, the great Demand banner,
WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTI-
TUTION OF THE UNITED STATES ENFRANCHIS-
ING WOMEN, followed one hundred other cars, beautifully
decorated with purple ribbons, with gold and white chrysan-
themums and with floating goldein balloons, blazed — among
the jet-black motors and the glossy green busses of Fifth
Avenue — a path of purple and gold. A huge meeting was
held in the ball-room at Sherry's at which Mrs. O. H. P.
Belmont, Frances Joliffe, and .Florence Kelley spoke for the
Suffragists. Sara Bard Field closed the meeting. The

114 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Tribune said : " A tired little woman in a travel-worn brown
suit, she stood in the glitter of Sherry's ball-room, and held
out a tired little brown hand."

" We want to help you, the voting women of the West,"
she pleaded ; " will you let us ? " " The audience," the
Suffragist says, " was moved to tears and action : six thou-
sand dollars was contributed to the Congressional Union."

The late Mayor Mitchell telephoned to the meeting his
regret that he was unable to be present because of illness;
but he received the envoys at his home, and added his name
to the petition.

At Washington, the envoys were met by an escort, planned
and directed for the Congressional Union by Mary Austin,
the celebrated novelist. It comprised a group of mounted
women, representing the eleven States and Alaska, in all of
which women are enfranchised; another group, representing
the thirty-seven unenfranchised States; great numbers of
flag and banner bearers, wearing long, purple capes with
deep yellow collars and white stoles; hundreds of women
carrying purple, white, and gold pennants.

The party started at once for the Capitol to the music
first of the Marseillaise and then of Dixie.

There were two picturesque features of the parade. The
famous petition itself, bearing five hundred thousand sig^
natures, unrolled to the length of one hundred feet, and
carried by twenty bearers, was the focus for all eyes. A
replica of the Liberty Bell, lavishly decorated in purple,
white, and gold, and mounted on the same truck which had
carried it through the Pennsylvania State campaign, of
course attracted almost an equal degree of attention.

At the top of the high broad Capitol steps Senator
Sutherland of Utah and Representative Mbndell, surrounded
by a group of Senators and Representatives, formed a recep-
tion committee. To music, Sara Bard Field and Frances
Joliffe marched up the steps followed by the petition bearers
and attendants. The envoys made speeches and Senator
Sutherland and Representative Mondell replied to them.

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 115

From the Capitol, the party proceeded to the White
House.

President Wilson received the envoys in the East Room.
Anne Martin introduced Sara Bard Field and Prances
Joliffe.

In closing, ^Miss Joliffe said: " Help us, Mr. President, to
a new freedom and a larger liberty."

Sara Bard Field emphasized that same note:

. . . and, Mr. President, as I am not to have the woman's
privUege of the last word, may I say that I know what your
plan has been in the past, that you have said it was a matter
for the States. But we have seen that, like all great men, you
have changed your mind on other questions. We have watched
the change and development of your mind on preparedness, and
we honestly believe that circumstances have so altered that you
may change your mind in this regard.

Mrs. Field then requested the President to look at the
petition. He advanced, unrolled a portion of it, and ex-
amined it with interest.

The President said:

I did not come here anticipating the necessity of making an
address of any kind. As you have just heard (and here the
President smiled), I hope it is true that I am not a man set
stiffly beyond the possibility of learning. I hope that I shall
continue to be a learner as long as I live.

I can only say to you this afternoon that nothing could be
more impressive than the presentation of such a request in such
numbers and backed by such influence as undoubtedly stands
behind you. Unhappily it is too late for me to consider what
is to go into my message, because that went out to the news-
papers at least a week ago; and I have a habit — perhaps the
habit of the teacher — of confining my utterances to one subject
at a time, for fear that two subjects might compete with one
another for prominence. I have felt obliged in the present pos-
ture of affairs to devote my message to one subject, and am,
therefore, sorry to say that it is too late to take under consid-
eration your request that I embody this in my message. All I
can say with regard to what you are urging at present is this:
I hope I shall always have an open mind, and I shall certainly

116 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

take the greatest pleasure in conferring in the most serious way
with my colleagues at the other end of the city with regard
to what is the right thing to do at this time concerning this
great matter. I am always restrained, as some of you will re-
member, by the consciousness that I must speak for others as
well as for myself as long as I occupy my present ofEce, and,
therefore, I do not like to speak for others until I consult
others and see what I am justified in saying.

This visit of yours will remain in my mind, not only as a very
delightful compliment, but also as a very impressive thing which
undoubtedly will make it necessary for all of us to consider
very carefully what is right for us to do.

It will be noted that in this speech, the President referred
to the " influence " behind the women. He speaks of the
" impressive " quality of this demonstration.

From now on the strength of the woman voters became
a dominant note in the work with both the President and
Congress.

On December 12, a great mass-meeting of welcome to the
envoys was held in the Belasco Theatre. Forty-five thou-
sand dollars was pledged there for the work with Congress.

The Sixty-fourth Congress convened December 6.

The Susan B. Anthony Amendment, at the request of the
Congressional Union, was introduced in the Senate on De-
cember 7 by Senator Sutherland of Utah and in the House
on December 6 by Representative Mondell of Wyoming.
Other members introduced the identical measure the same
day. In the Senate, it was referred to the Committee on
Woman Suffrage and in the House to the Judiciary Com-
mittee.

On December 16 occurred a Suffrage hearing before
the Judiciary Committee. It will be remembered that this
was the first hearing since the Congressional Union h^
campaigned against the Democratic Party. It was one
of the most stormy in the history of the Congressional
Union. Later a Republican Congressman referred to it, not

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 117

IS the "hearing," but as the "interruption." The storm
3id not break until after two hours in which the speakers
jf the other Suffrage Association had been heard^ and the
Following members of the Congressional Union: Mrs.
\ndreas Ueland, Jennie C. Law Hardy, Florence Bayard
Hilles, Mabel Vernon, all introduced by Alice Paul.

At this point, there occurred among the Democratic
nembers of the Committee a sudden meeting of heads, a
listurbed whispering. To informed lookers-on, it became
evident that it had just dawned on them that the pale,
lelicate, slender slip of a girl in a gown of violet silk and
I long Quakerish white fichu was the power behind all this
igitation, that redoubtable Alice Paul who had waged the
:ampaign of 1914 against them.

As Alice Paul rose to introduce one of the speakers, Mr.
Faggart of Kansas interrogated her. It will be remembered
that this was the Mr. Taggart whose majority had been
liminished, by the Woman's Party campaign, from three
:housand to three hundred.

Mr. Taggart to Miss Paul: Are you here to report progress
D your effort to defeat Democratic candidates ?

Miss Paul: We are here to talk about this present Congress
—this present situation. We are here to ask the Judiciary
liommittee to report this bill to the House.

Mr. Taggart: I take this occasion to say as a member of
his committee that if there was any partisan organization made
ip of men who had attempted to defeat members of this com-
aittee, I do not think we would have given them a hearing. And
f they had been men, they wouldn't have asked it.

Miss Paul: But you hear members of the Republican Party
,nd of the Prohibition Party.

Mr. Webb: They aren't partisan. (Laughter).

Mr. Taggart, coming back to the attack: You didn't defeat
. single Democratic Member of Congress in a Suffrage State.

Miss Paul, quickly: Why, then, are you so stirred up over
ur campaign? (Audible murmur from Republican left wing).

Mr. Webb : I move a recess of this committee for one hour.

After the recess Miss Paul rose to introduce Helen Todd
f California.

118 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Mr. Williams put the following question to her:

Miss Paul, would you state to me the names of the candidates
for Congress which your organization opposed in the State of
Illinois ?

Miss Paul: We conducted our campaign only in the nine States
in which women were ahle to vote for members of Congress.
In no way did we participate in the campaign in Illinois.

Miss Paul then introduced Helen Todd. After Miss Todd
had spoken, Frances Joliffe and Sara Bard Field spoke.
Later Alice Paul said:

In closing the argument before this committee, may I sum-
marize our position? We have come here to ask one simple
thing: that the Judiciary Committee refer this Suffrage Amend-
ment, known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, to the House
of Representatives. We are simply asking you to do what you
can do — that you let the House of Representatives decide this
question. We have tried to bring people to this hearing from
all over the United States to show the desire of women that
this should be done.

I want to emphasize just one point, in addition, that we are
absolutely non-partisan. We are made up of women who are
strong Democrats, Women who are strong Republicans, women
who are Socialists, Progressives — every type of women. We are
all united on this one thing — that we put Suffrage before every-
thing else. In every election, if we ever go into any future
elections, we simply pledge ourselves to this — that we will con-
sider the furtherance of Suffrage and not our party affiliations
in deciding what action we shall take.

Mr. Williams, of Illinois: Is it your policy to fight this ques-
tion out only as a national issue? Do you make any attempt
to secure relief through the States?

Miss Paul: The Congressional Union is organized to work for
an Amendment to the National Constitution. We feel that the
time has come, because of the winning of so many Suffrage
States in the West, to use the votes of women to get Suffrage
nationally. In the earlier days in this country, all the Suffrage
work was done in the States, but the winning of the Western
States has given us a power which we did not have before, so
we have now turned from State work to national work. We
are concentrating on the national government.

Mr. Gard: Miss Paul, is it true that you prefer to approach

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 119

this through the State legislatures than to approach it directly
through the people?

Miss Paul: We prefer the quickest way, which we believe is
by Congressional action.

Mr. Taggart: Why did you oppose the Democrats in the last
election ?

Miss Paul: We came into existence when the administration
of President Wilson first came in. We appealed to all members
of Congress to have this Amendment put through at once. We
did get that measure out upon the floor of the House and Senate,
but when it came to getting a vote in the House we found we
were absolutely blocked. We went again and again, week after
week, and month after month to the Democratic members of the
Rules Committee, who controlled the apportioning of the time of
the House, and asked them to. give us five or ten minutes for the
discussion of Suffrage. Every time they refused. They told us
that they were powerless to act because the Democrats had met
in caucus and decided that Suffrage was a matter to be decided
in the States and should not be brought up in Congress. (Here
Miss Paul, moving the papers in front of her, deftly extracted
a letter.) I have here a letter from Mr. Henry, Chairman of
the Rules Committee, m which he says : " It would give me great
pleasure to report the Resolution to the House, except for the
fact that the Democratic caucus, by its direct action, has tied
my hands and placed me in a position where I will not be au-
thorized to do so unless the caucus is reconvened and changes its
decision. I am sure your good judgment will cause you to
thoroughly understand my attitude."

(This interesting revelation was greeted by appreciative grins
from the Republican members.)

After we had been met for months with the statement that the
Democratic Party had decided in caucus not to let Suffrage
come up in Congress, we said, "We will go, out to the women
voters in the West and tell them how we are blocked in Wash-
ington, and ask them if they will use their vote for the very
highest purpose for which they can use it — to help get votes for
other women."

We campaigned against every one of the forty-three men who
were running for Congress on the Democratic ticket in any of
the Suffrage States; and only nineteen of those we campaigned
against came back to Washington. In December, at the close of
the election, we went back to the Rules Committee. They told
us then that they had no greater desire in the world than to
bring the Suffrage Amendment out. They told us that we had

120 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

misunderstood them in thinking that they were opposed to having
Suffrage come up in Congress. They voted at once to bring
Suffrage upon the floor for the first time in history. The whole
opposition of the Democratic Party melted away and the decision
of the party caucus was reversed.

The part we played in the last election was simply to tell the
women voters of the West of the way the Democratic Party had
blocked us at Washington and of the way the individual mem-
bers of the Party, from the West, had supported their Party in
blocking us. As soon as we told this record they ceased block-
ing us and we trust they will never block us again.

Question: But what about next time?

Miss Paul: We hope we will never have to go into another
election. We are appealing to all Parties and to all men to put
this Amendment through this Congress and send it on to the
State Legislatures. What we are doing is giving the Democrats
their opportunity. We did pursue a certain policy which we
have outlined to you as you requested. As to what we may do
we cannot say. It depends upon the future situation.

Question: But we want to know what you will do in the 1916
election?

Miss Paul: Can you possibly tell us what will be in the plat-
form of the Democratic Party in 1916?

Mr. Webb: I can tell one plank that will not be there, and
that is a plank in favor of Woman Suffrage.

Question: If conditions are the same, do you not propose to
fight Democrats just the same as you did a year ago? '

Miss Paul: We have come to ask your help in this Congress.
But in asking it we have ventured to remind you that in the next
election one-fifth of the vote for President comes from Suffrage
States. What we shall do in that election depends upon what
you do.

Mr. Webb: We would know better what to do if we knew
what you were going to do.

Mr. Gard: We should not approach this hearing in any
partisan sense. What I would like is to be informed about
some facts. I asked Mrs. Field what reason your organization
had for asking Congress to submit this question to States that
have already acted upon it. Why should there be a resubmission
to the voters by national action in States which have either voted
for or against it, when the machinery exists in these same States
to vote for it again ?

Miss Paul: They have never voted on the question of a Na-
tional Amendment.

THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL 121

Mr. Gard: The States can only ratify it. You would prefer
that course to having it taken directly to the people?

Miss Paul: Simply because we have the power of women's
votes to brck up this method. <

Mr. Gard: You are using this method because you think you
have power to enforce it?

Miss Paul: Because we know we have power. ,

Mr. Taggart: The women who have the vote in the West
are not worrying about what women are doing in the East.
You will have to get more States before you try this na-
tionally.

Miss Paul: We think that this repeated advise to go back to
the States proves beyond all cavil that we are on the right
track. /

Mr. Taggart: Suppose you get fewer votes this time? Do
you think it is fair to those members of Congress who voted for
Woman Suffrage and have stood fori Woman Suffrage, to oppose
them merely because a majority of their Party were not in favor
of Woman Suffrage? /

Miss Paul: Every man that we opposed stood by his Party
caucus in its opposition to Suffrage. >.

Mr. Volstead: This inquiry is absolutely unfair and improper.
It is cheap politics, and I have gotten awfully tired listening
to it.

Mr. Taggart: Have your services been bespoken by the Re-
publican committee of Kansas for the next campaign?

Miss Paul: We are greatly gratified by this tribute to our
value.

Mr. Moss: State just whether or not it is a fact that the
question is. What is right? and not. What will be the reward
or punishment of the members of this committee? Is not that
the only question that is pending before this committee?

Miss Paul: Yes, as we have said over and over today. We
have come simply to ask that this committee report this measure
to the House, that the House may consider the question.

Mr. Moss: Can you explain to the committee what; the ques-
tion of what you are going to do to a member of this committee
or a Congressman in regard to his vote has to do with the ques-
tion of what we should do as our duty?

Miss Paul: As I have said, we don't see any reason for dis-
cussing that.

Mr. Webb: You have no blacklist, have you. Miss Paul?
Miss Paul: No.

Mr. Taggart: You are organized, are you not, for the chas'

122 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

tisement of political Parties that do not do your bidding at
once?

Miss Paul: We are organized to win votes for women and
our method of doing this is to organize the women who have
the vote to help other women to get it.

The meeting then adjourned.

Before going on with the work for 1916, it is perhaps
expedient to mention here one of two interesting events. The
New York Tribune announced on November 5 that, " accept-
ing the advise of Mrs. Medill McCormick of Chicago, the
National American Woman Suffrage Association announced
yesterday that it had instructed the Congressional Com-
mittee not to introduce the Shafroth-Palmer Resolution in
the Sixty-fourth Congress." This meant, of course, that
there would in the future be no division of the energies of
the Suffrage forces of the country; that all would work
for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

THE NEW HEADQUARTERS AND THE
MIDDLE YEARS

The second event of 1916 of less importance nationally,
but of great practical importance to the Congressional
Union, was the removal of Headquarters from the dark, con-
gested rooms in F Street to Cameron HouSe, sometimes
known as the Little White House. Cameron House has held,
ever since its construction, a vivid place in Washington his-
tory. It has been occupied by Senator Donald Cameron;
Vice-President Garret A. Hobart; Senator Mark Hanna.
The famous breakfasts given by Senator Hanna, to which
President McKinley often came, occurred here. Presidents,
such as John Quincy Adams, Harrison, Taylor, and Fillmore ;
statesmen, such as Webster, Clay, Cass, and Calhoun; his-
torians, such as Prescott, Bancroft, and Washington Irving,
have frequented it. The Little White House is situated at
21 Madison Place, just across Lafayette Square from the
big White House. From the windows of the big White
House could be seen great banners of purple, white,
and gold, waving at the windows of the Little White
House.

Cameron House was charming inside and out. Outside,
a great wistaria vine made in the spring a marvel of its
fafade, and inside a combination of fine proportions and a
charming architectural arrangement of the rooms gave it
that gemUtlich atmosphere necessary to a rallying spot.
When you entered, you came into a great hall, from which
a noble staircase made an effective exit, and in which a huge
fireplace formed a focussing center. All winter long, a fire
was going in that fireplace ; there were easy chairs in front
of it, and straying off from it. The Little White House

123

124 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

became a place where people dropped in easily. This big
reception hall always held a gay, interesting, and interested
group, composed of Party members resident there; sym-
pathizers and workers who lived in Washington ; people from
all over the United States who had come to Washington on
a holiday. The organizers were always returning from the
four corners of the country with a harvest of news and ideas
and plans before starting off for new fields.

Perhaps there is no better place than here to speak of the
work of those remarkable young women — ^the organizers. It
will be remembered that from the time of the formation of
the Congressional Committee to the time when the Senate
passed the Anthony Amendment was about six years and a
half. Yet in 1919, Maud Younger said to me, " There have
been three generations of organizers in this movement."
That was true. Not that they served their average of two
years and left. Most of them who came to work for the
Party stayed with it. It was only that, as the work grew,
developed, expanded, more organizers and even more became
necessary. And perhaps it is one of the chief glories of the
Woman's Party that these organizers came to them younger
and younger, until at the end they were fresh, beautiful
girls in their teens and early twenties.

The first group consisted of:

Mabel Vernon; Elsie Hill; Margaret Whittemore; Doris
Stevens; Mrs. Sinclair Thompson; Virginia Arnold.

The second group consisted of:

Iris Calderhead; Vivian Pierce; Beulah Amidon; Lucy
Branham ; Hazel Hunkins ; Clara Louise Rowe ; Joy Young ;
Margery Ross; Mary Gertrude Fendall; Pauline Clarke;
Alice Henkel; Rebecca Hourwich.

The third group consisted of :

Julia Emory; Betty Gram; Anita Pollitzer; Mary Du-
brow; Catherine Flanagan.

The difficulties which lay in the path of the organizers
cannot possibly be exaggerated : the work they accomplished
cannot possibly be estimated. Their story is one of those

THE. NEW HEADQUARTERS 126

sealed chapters in the history of feminism, the whole of
which will never be known. With her usual astuteness Alice
Paul always chose young, fresh, convinced, inspiring, and
inspired spirits. Always she preferred enthusiasm to expe-
rience. Before an organizer left Headquarters for parts
unknown, Alice Paul talked with her for several hours, going
over her route, indicating the problems which would arise
and — in her characteristic and indescribable Alice Paul way
— suggesting how they were to be met ; holding always above
these details the shining object of the journey; managing
somehow to fill her with the feeling that in spite of many
obstacles, she would conquer all these new worlds. " No
matter," she always concluded, " what other Suffragists may
say about us, pay no attention to it ; go on with your work.
Our fight is not against women."

Sometimes these girls would come into towns where there
not only existed no Suffrage organization but there had
never been a Suffrage meeting. Sometimes they would have
a list of names of people to whom to go for help; some-
times not that. At any rate they went to the best hotel and
established themselves there. Then they found Head-
quarters, preferably in the hotel lobby ; but if not there, in
a shop window. Next they saw the newspapers. Inevitably
it seemed — ^Alice Paul's sure instinct never failed her here
— they were incipient newspaper women. From the moment
they arrived, blazing their purple, white, and gold, the
papers rang with them, and that ringing continued until
they left. They called on the women whose names had been
given them, asked them to serve on a committee in order
to arrange a meeting. At that meeting, to which National
Headquarters would send a well-known speaker, the work
would be explained, the aims of the Woman's Party set
forth, its history reviewed. When the organizer left that
town, she left an organization of some sort behind her. Alice
Paul always preferred, rather than a large, inactive mem-
bership, a few active women who, when needed, could bring
pressure to bear from their State on Washington.

126 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

In the course of its history, the Woman's Party has
organized at some time in every State of the Union.

Whenever the organizers came hack to Washington, Miss
Paul always sent them to the Capitol to lobby for a while.
This put them in touch with the Congressional situation.
Moreover, Congressmen were always glad to talk with
women who brought them concrete information in regard
to the country at large, and particularly in regard to
the Suffrage sentiment and the political situation in their
own States, which they had often not seen for months. On
the other- hand, when the organizers embarked on their next
journey, editors of small towns were always very grateful for
the chance of talking with these informed young persons,
who could bring their news straight from the national
news-mint.

But one of the great secrets of Alice Paul's success was
that she freshened her old forces all the time, by giving
them new work, brought new forces to bear all the time on
the old work. If organizers showed the first symptoms of
growing stale on one beat, she transferred them to another.
Most of them performed at some time during their connec-
tion with the Woman's Party every phase of its work.
Perpetual change . . . perpetual movement . . . the
onward rush of an exhilarating flood . . . that was the
feeling the Woman's Party gave the onlooker.

I reiterate that it would be impossible to do justice, short
of a book devoted entirely to their efforts, to these or-
ganizers. They turn up everywhere. They do everything!
They know not fatigue ! There is no end to their ingenuity
and enthusiasm.

In spite of all this intensive thinking, and its result in
action, the Congressional Union had its lighter moments, and
many of them.

On Valentine's Day, 1916, a thousand Suffrage valentines
were despatched to Senators and Representatives by mem-
bers of the Congressional Union living in their districts ; the
President and VicerPresident were not forgotten. They were

THE NEW HEADQUARTERS 127

of all kinds and descriptions. Recalcitrant politicians were
especially favored. The Rules Committee, for instance,
were showered. One of Mr. Henry's valentines took the
form of an acrostic: •

H is for Hurry —

Which Henry should do.

E is for Every —

Which includes women too,

N is for Now —
The moment to act.

R is for Rules —

Which must bend to the fact.

Y is for You —

With statesmanlike tact.

Mr. Pou's valentine showed an exquisitely ruffled little
maiden, with Jieel-less, cross-gartered slippers and a flower-
trimmed hat, curtseying to a stocked and ruffled gentleman
who is presenting her with a bouquet. Underneath it says :

The rose is red.
The violet's blue.
But VOTES are better
Mr. Pou.

One to Representative Williams of the Judiciary Com-
mittee ran:

Ok, will you will us well. Will,
As we will will by you.
If you'll only will to help us
Put the Amendment through!

Representative Webb's valentine bore the words, " From
a fond heart to a Democratic (?) Congressman," with the
following verse:

128 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Federal aid he votes for rural /highways.
And Federal aid for pork ea^h to his need;
And Federal aid for rivers, trees, and harbors.
But Federal aid for women? — No, indeed!
•

Representative Fitzgerald received: _

Your Party's health is very shaky,
The Western women say.
They scorn a laggard lover
And will not tell him " Yea,"
B!ut pass the Suffrage measure.
Then watch Election Day !

Congressman Mondell's valentine was a red heart, on which
was written:

Oh, a young Lochinvar has come out of the West,
Of all the great measures his bill was the best !
So fearless in caucus, so brave on the floor
There ne'er was a leader like young Lochinvar!

On May Day, the Woman's Party hung a May basket
for the President. It was over-brimming with purple, white,
and gold flowers, and, concealed in their midst, was a plea
for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Later, in May, on Representative Williams's birthday, he
was invited by Representative Kent to go with him into the
visitors' lobby. There he met Gertrude and Ruth Crocker
of the Congressional Union, who were carrying on a tray,
made of the Congressional Union banner and the American
flag, a huge birthday cake. It was frosted and set with
fifty-nine candles, each emerging from a small, yellow rose
and bore an inscription in purple letters :

May the coming year bring yon joy and the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment.

A few days later, when Representative Steele reached his
office, he found on his desk a purple basket filled with forget-
me-nots. The card bore this inscription :

THE NEW HEADQUARTERS 129

" Forget me not " is the message
I bring in my gladsome blue;
Forget not the fifty-six years that have gone
And the work there is still to do;
Forget not the Suffrage Amendment •■

That waits in committee for you.

The first National Convention of the Congressional Union
was held at Cameron House from December G to December
13, 1915. The following ten members were elected for the
Executive Committee: Alice Paul; Lucy Bums; Mrs.
O. H. P. Belmont; Mrs. John Winters Brannan; Mrs.
Gilson Gardner; Mrs. William Kent; Mrs. Lawrence, Lewis;
Elsie Hill; Anne Martin; Mrs. Donald R. Hooker.

THE CONFLICT WITH THE JUDICIARY
COMMITTEE

BOTHERATION

(" Why do you come here and bother us ? " — Chairman Webb,
at the Suffrage hearing in Washington.)

Girls, girls, the worst has happened;

Our cause is at its ebb.
How could you go and do it!

You've bothered Mr. Webb!
You came and asked for freedom,

(As law does not forbid)
Not thinking it might bother him,

And yet, it seems, it did.

Oh, can it be, my sisters,

My sisters can it be.
You did not think of Mr. Webb

When asking to be free?
You did not put his comfort

Before your cause.'' How strange!
But now you know the way he feels

I hope we'll have a change.

Send word to far Australia

And let New Zealand know.
And Oregon and Sweden,

Finland and Idaho;
Make all the nations grasp it.

From Sitka to El Teb,
We never mention Suffrage now;

It bothers Mr. Webb!

Alice Duer Miller.
130

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 131

OUR IDEA OF NOTHING AT ALL

(" I am opposed to Woman Suffrage, but I am not opposed to
woman." — Anti-Suffrage speech of Mr. Webb of North Carolina.)

Oh, women, have you heard the news

Of charity and grace?
Look, look, how joy and gratitude

Are beaming in my face !
For Mr. Webb is not opposed

To woman in her place !

Oh, Mr. Webb, how kind you are

To let us live at all.
To let us light the kitchen range

And tidy up the hall;
To tolerate the female sex

In spite of Adam's fall.

Oh, girls, suppose that Mr. Webb

Should alter his decree!
Suppose he were opposed to us —

Opposed to you and me.
What would be left for us to do —

Except to cease to be?

Alice Duer Miller.

DuBiNG 1916, the central department of the Congressional
Union — the legislative — was in the hands of Anne Martin
who after her notable success in making Nevada a free State
and with the added advantage of being a voter herself, was
particularly fitted for this work. Anne Martin showed ex-
traordinary ability in building back-fires in Congressional
Districts, in keeping State and district chairmen informed
of the actions of the representatives, in getting pressure
from home upon them and in organizing the lobbying. Maud
Younger, as chairman of the Lobby Committee, composed
of women voters, assisted her. Lucy Bprns edited the
Suffragist.
The friends of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment were

132 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

surprised — and of course delighted — ^when through the tire-
less efforts of Anne Martin — the Suffrage Bill came out of
committee and onto the calendar of the Senate on Janu-
ary 8. In the House at first, the situation seemed equally
encouraging. But unexpected obstacles manifested them-
selves; continued to multiply and grow. Presently there
developed between the Judiciary Committee and the Suf-
fragists a contest similar to that of 1914! between the Rules
Committee and the Suffragists, but more intense.

The Judiciary Committee as usual referred the Amend-
ment to a sub-committee. Anne Martin lobbied the members
of the sub-committee and in consequence of this pressure,
the sub-committee on February 9, voted the report out —
although without recommendation, to the full committee
which would meet on February 15.

At this meeting, by a vote of nine to seven, the Judiciary
Committee referred the Suffrage Resolution back to the sub-
committee with instructions to hold it until December 14 —
nearly a year off. This was an unusual thing to do. After
a sub-committee has reported a measure to the committee,
it is customary to allow at least a week to elapse before it
is acted upon, so that the members who are absent may be
present when the committee, as a whole, votes upon it. There
is a gentleman's agreement to this effect.

In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, in McCcUVs
Magazine, Maud Younger thus describes the meeting of
February 16:

The day ended as discouragingly as it had begun and I re-
ported the situation to Mr. John Nelson, of Wisconsin, the only
man on the committee who showed genuine enthusiasm.

"Your Amendment can't come up tomorrow," he assured me.
" There's a gentleman's agreement that no action shall be taken
on a bill for a week after the sub-committee reports it out. The
matter lies over so that the members may he notified to be
present. Your Amendment will come up next week."

Relying on this reprieve, I felt no apprehension when Anne
and I went to the Capitol next morning. Standing in the ante-
room of the Judiciary Committee's chamber, we watched the

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 133

members passing througb. Tbe committee went into executive
session and tbe door closed.
> " There's the gentleman's agreement," I said to Anne.
" Nothing can happen."

" No," she answered meditatively.

We waited. An hour passed and Mr. Carlin came out. He
walked close to Anne and said with a laugh as he passed her,
" Well, we've killed Cock Robin."

"Cock Robin?" said Anne, puzzled, looking after him.

Mr. Nelson came out, much perturbed, and explained. Upon
motion of Mr. Carlin the Judiciary Committee had voted to send
the Amendment back to the sub-committee to remain until the
following December.

This was in direct violation of the gentleman's agreement but
our opponents had the votes, nine to seven, and they used them.
Our Amendment was killed. Every one on the committee said
so. Every one in Congress with whom we talked said so. The
newspaper men said so. Soon every one believed it but Alice
Paul, and she never believed it at all.

" That's absurd ! " she said impatiently. " We have only to
make them reconsider."

At once she went over the list of our opponents to decide who
should make the move. "Why, William Elza Williams, of
Illinois, of course. He will do it." She sent me to see him.

Mr. Williams was necessary not only for purposes of recon-
sideration, but because, when he had changed his vote, we would
have a majority in committee. But he did not see the matter at
all in the same light in which Miss Paul saw it. He had not the
least intention of changing his vote. I pointed out that the
women of Illinois, being half voters, had some claims to repre-
sentation, but he remained obdurate.

When this was reported to Miss Paul she merely said, " Mr.
Williams will have to change his vote. Elsie Hill can attend
to it."

So Elsie, buoyant with good spirits, good health, and tireless
enthusiasm, pinned her smart hat on her reddish-brown hair and
set out through Illinois for Mr. Williams's vote.

Presently the ripples of Elsie's passing across the Illinois
prairies began to break upon the peaceful desk of Mr. Williams
in Washington. I found him running a worried hand through
his hair, gazing at newspaper clippings about Mr. Williams and
his vote on the Judiciary Committee. Resolutions arrived from
Labor Unions asking him to reconsider; letters from constituents,
telegrams, reports of meetings, editorials.

134 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

On March 8, a deputation of twenty members of the Con-
gressional Union, led by Maud Younger, called on Repre-
sentative Williams. I quote the Suffragist:

Mr. Williams received the women with cordiality and Miss
Younger at once laid before him tfie object of the visit.

" Op the fifteenth of February," said Miss Younger, " the sub-
committee reported out the Suffrage Amendment. We are told
that there is a gentleman's agreement to the effect that when a
sub-committee reports, no action shall be taken that day but
the matter shall lie over for a week. Four of our supporters
were absent on the day of the report and the. opposition sent the
Amendment back to sub-committee. There were nine votes cast
in favor of sending it back, and seven against. We feel that it
was you who cast the deciding vote, for if you had voted with
supporters of Suffrage, the vote would have been a tie, and the
Amendment would not now be in sub-committee.

You told me that you were in favor of having this matter
remain in committee until December, because you felt it would
be embarrassing to some men who would run for o£Bce next fall.
As a trades-unionist, as well as a woman voter, I feel that the
eight million working women of this country are entitled to as
much consideration as are a few politicians."

Miss Younger then introduced Mrs. Lowell Mellett, of Seattle,
Washington; Mrs. William Kent, of California; Mrs. GUson
Gardner, Mrs. Charles Edward Russell, of Illinois; Anne
Martin, of Nevada; each of whom made an appeal to Mr.
Williams to give his support to a report from the Judiciary
Committee during the present session.

Miss Martin said:

You are in what seems to us a very undesirable position. You
are a Representative from a Suffrage State, from a State where
women have the right to vote for President. You are a pro-
fessed Suffragist, yet you are the only member of that committee
who is a Suffragist and who is in the position of having voted
with the professed anti-Suffragists against a hearing. . . . We
urge you to do everything in your power to reconsider the
smothering of this resolution, and bring up the question in com-
mittee again as soon as possible, to report it to the House and
then to leave to the Rules Committee the question of what time
it shall have for discussion in this session. We urge this most
earnestly.

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 135

Mr. Williams replied:

I am pleased to hear from you ladies and to know fully your
side of this case.

If I remember correctly the conversation you refer to in which
I spoke of some embarrassment — not to myself, but to some of
my colleagues — I think I stated the condition of the calendar
and the business of this session. I have not double-crossed any-
body. I have not taken any sudden change of front. I have
told every representative of the Suffrage organization who has
visited me that I do not favor a report at this first session of
the Sixty-fourth Congress. I gave, as my primary reason, the
crowded condition of the business of this Congress. I inciden-
tally— sometimes in a good-natured way, as I remember — stated
that it did not embarrass me to vote on the question because I
was already on record, but it might embarrass some of my col-
leagues. My real views have been that Congress has duties in
this, a campaign year, when all members hope to leave ,at a
reasonable time within which to make their campaign; that this
session is not a good time to take upon ourselves the considera-
tion of any unimportant question that can be disposed of just
as well at the next session.

With a campaign approaching and two national conventions
in June, I do not believe it wise for your cause to crowd this
matter on now. I do not believe that it would get that consid-
eration that you will get after the election and after these neces-
sary matters — ^matters of importance and urgent necessity — ^are
disposed of.

I am opposed to smothering anything in committee. I do not
propose to smother this in committee. I intend, when I think
it is the proper time, to vote the Susan B. Anthony Amendment
out and vote for it in the House. Now that is my intention.
I have not said that I would not do so at this session. I think
the strongest that I have put it is that I would not do so unless
the work of the session is cleared away so that we can get to it.

Now I have said more than that. At any time that you get a
full attendance of the committee, or those absent represented
by pairs so that both sides are represented, and no advantage
can be taken and no criticism made of what takes place, when-
ever there is what is equivalent to a full committee present, I
am willing that the committee shall again vote on the question
and determine whether they want it out now.

Miss Younger: Before the conventions will meet in June, Con-
gress will have been in session six months, and we ask you for
only one day out of the six months. Some of those other ques-

136 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

tions, such as preparedness, are not ready to come before Con-
gress.

Mr. Williams : You would not be satisfied with one day.

Miss Martin: That is all we had last time and we were
satisfied.

Mrs. Russell: Whatever action Congress takes or does not take
on preparedness, we women wiU. have to stand for it. Any
program tha,t Congress puts through we shall be involved in.
Isn't that jiist one more reason why we ought to have a vote
promptly ?

Mr. Williams: Yes, but you cannot get it in time for the
emergency that is now before us. I believe this: If women had
full political rights everywhere there would not be any war.
But that cannot be brought about in time for this emergency.

" We cannot conceive," said one member of the delegation at
this juncture, " of any situation which will not permit of three-
quarters of an hour being taken on the floor of the House
for a vote."

Mr. Williams: We have no right to refuse to submit it. I
would not smother it in committee at all, but I believe the com-
mittee has a right to exercise their discretion as to when it shall
be submitted. . . . How do you take my suggestion? I am
willing that a vote may be had at any time if there is the
equivalent of a full attendance of the committee. Can that be
secured ?

Miss Martin: I have been working with this committee for
nearly three months, and I do not know of any session at which
they have all been present. You impose upon us now a condition
that you did not exact when this Amendment was smothered.

I think that we must regard a motion to postpone until after
election as an action unfriendly to Suffrage.

Mr. Williams: It may be. I do not see how it can be.

" Last year," a member of the delegation then reminded Mr.
Williams, "the Amendment was postponed and voted on im-
mediately after the elections were safely over. The plan now
is to postpone it until after the elections to the Sixty-fifth Con-
gress are over and no one's election will be jeopardized. We
do not like to have the vote taken in each Congress inunediately
after election."

Miss Martin: We are not saying anything with reference to
a vote on the floor of the House at this time. We are simply
asking that the Judiciary Committee perform its function and
judge the bill on its merits and make its report to the House.
Does not that appeal to you?

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 137

Mr. Williams: Yes, it does. I am told I am the only member
of the committee who voted to postpone the Amendment, who
is a Representative from a Suffrage State. Somehow or other
you have put the burden on me.

Miss Martin: You are. The burden is on you.

Miss Younger: If we could prove to you that with your vote
we would have a majority of the committee, would you be willing
to vote to report it out to the House.

Mr. Williams: There would be ten besides myself favorable
to reporting it out? Yes, if you have the ten.

Miss Martin: I have them right here. You are the eleventh.
We have those ten votes.

Mr. Williams: Well, I hope you have. May I ask you just
to read them?

Miss Martin: These are the ten who are for reporting the
Amendment: Representatives Thomas, of Kentucky; Taggart, oi
Kansas ; Dale of New York ; Neely, of West Virginia ; Volstead,
of Minnesota; Nelson, of Wisconsin; Morgan, of Oklahoma;
Chandler, of New York; Dyer, of Missouri, and Moss, of West
Virginia. That makes ten.

Mr. Williams: And Mr. Williams will make eleven. When
will it be possible to get them all together?

Miss Martin: We were hoping to do that by tomorrow. Mr.
Dale was here but he has been called back to New York. Mr.
Moss has been seriously ill but has promised to attend the
meeting tomorrow. I will read the names of the men who are
against a report. They are all anti-Suffragists and you are
classified with them: Representatives Webb, of North Carolina;
Carlin, of Virginia ; Walker, of Georgia ; Gard, of Ohio ; Whaley,
of South Carolina; Caraway, of Arkansas; Igoe, of Missouri;
Steele, of Pennsylvania, and, until now, yourself.

Mr. Williams: If a majority of the committee want to recon-
sider it I will vote in favor of it.

Miss Martin: What would you do if we could only get ten
Suffrage members present tomorrow and they were a majority
of those present?

Mr. Williams : Let us not make any further agreement. I have
agreed to your former proposition and I will stand by my word.

Miss Martin: We are sure you will.

After the deputation had left his office Mr. Williams
promised Miss Younger and Miss Martin that, whenever the
requisite number of friends of Suffrage were present at a

138 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

meeting of the Judiciary Committee/ he himself would move
a reconsideration of the question.

Again I quote Miss Younger's, Revelations of a Woman
Lobbyist :

We now had a majority of one on the committee. We had only
to get the majority together. It seemed a simple thing to do,
but it wasn't.

The number of things that could take a Congressman out of
town on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, the number of minor
ailments that could develop on those days was appalling. It
seemed that every time a Congressman faced something he did
not want to do, he had a headache.

Monday after Monday, Wednesday after Wednesday, we went
from office to office, inquiring solicitously about each man's health.
Was he quite well? Did he have a headache or any symptoms
of internal disorders.^ Was his wife in good health.? His
children? Could any business affairs arise to take him out of
town next day? . . .

The weeks went by and we were not able to get our majority,
together.

" You think you're going to bring that question up again,"
said Mr. Webb, the chairman. " No power on earth will do it.
It's locked up in sub-committee till next December, and it's
going to stay there."

This was repeated to Miss Paul. " Nonsense ! " she said.
" Of course it will be brought up."

But why should all this petty bickering, this endless struggling
with absurdities be necessary in order to get before Congress
a measure dealing with a question of public good? No man
would run his private business that way. Yet that is the way
public business is done.

Finally after weeks of working and watchful waiting I re-
ported to Anne on Wednesday that a majority of our members
were in town and well. We were jubilant. Early next morning
we were before the doors of the Judiciary Committee to see them
file in. They arrived one by one, solemn, nervously hurrying by,
or smiling in an amused or friendly way. Mr. Hunter Moss,
our staunch friend, appeared. Mr. Moss was dying of cancer.
Though often too ill to leave his bed, he asked his secretary to
notify him whenever Suffrage was to come up so that he might
fight for it. Mr. Moss was our tenth man. We recoimted them
anxiously. Ten supporters, ten opponents — ^where was Mr.
Dale of New York? I flew downstairs to his office — I don't

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 189

know who went with me but I have a faint memory of red hair
— and there he was in his shirt sleeves cahnly looking over his
mail.

" Hurry ! " we cried. " The committee is ready to meet.
Every one's there except you ! "

He reached for his coat but we exclaimed, "Put it on in the
hall ! " and hurrying him out between us we raced down the
corridor, helping him with the coat as we ran, then into the
elevator and up to the third floor and to the committee room.
We deposited him in one vacant seat. Our majority was com-
plete !

As we stood oflf and looked at our eleven men sitting there
together, gathered with so much effort and trial, no artist was
ever prouder of a masterpiece than we. We stood entranced sur-
veying them until Mr. Webb sternly announced that the com-
mittee would go into executive session which meant that we
must go.

In the anteroom other Suffragists gathered, also the news-
paper men. Every one said that in a few moments the Amend-
ment would be reported out. But the minutes ran into hours.
'Our suspense grew. Each time those closed doors opened and
a member came out we asked for news. There was none.
"Carlin's got the floor."

The morning dragged past. Twelve o'clock came. Twelve-
thirty. One o'clock. The doors opened. We clustered around
our supporters and eagerly asked the news.

Well, Carlin got the floor and kept it. He took up the time.
It got late and the members were hungry and wanted to go to
luncheon, and there would have been a lot of wrangling over
the Amendment. So they adopted Carlin's motion to make Suf-
frage the special order of business two weeks from today.

" It's all right," our friends consoled us. " Only two weeks'
delay!"

But why two weeks.'' And why had Mr. Carlin, our avowed
and bitter enemy, himself made the motion to reconsider, tacking
to it the two weeks' delay, unless something disastrous was
planned.^

Now began a care and watchfulness over our eleven, in com-
parison to which all our previous watchfulness and care was as
nothing. Not only did we know each man's mind minutely from
day to day, but we had their constituents on guard at home.

Washington's mail increased. One man said, " I wish you'd
ask those Pennsylvania ladies to stop writing me ! " Mr. Morgan
said, " My secretary has been busy all day long answering letters

140 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

from Suffragists. Why do you do it? You know I'm for it."
Mr. Neely, at a desk covered with mail, broke forth in wrath,
eyes blazing, " Why do you have all those letters written to me
as though you doubted my stand? I'm as unchangeable as the
Medes and Persians ! "

On the 27th of March, the day before the vote, telegrams
poured in. We stumbled over messenger boys at every turn in
the House o£Sce building. Late that afternoon as Anne and I
went into Mr. Taggart's office we. passed a postman with a great
bundle of special-delivery letters.

Mr. Taggart was last on the list. Every one else was pledged
to be at the meeting next day.

" Yes, I'll be there," said Mr. Taggart slowly and ominously.
" But I'll be a little late."

" Late! " We jumped from our seats. " Why, it's the special
order for ten-thirty ! "

Well, I may not be very late. I've got an appointment with
the Persian Ambassador — Haroun al Baschid," said he, and
looked at each of us defiantly.

We pleaded, but in vain. Without Mr. Taggart we had not
a majority. What could we do? We discussed it while we
walked home in the crisp afternoon air. There was no Persian
ambassador in America, but a charge d'affaire, and his name was
not Haroun al Raschid, but Ali Kuli Kahn. We smiled at Mr.
Taggart's transparency, but we were alarmed. Our Amendment
hung on Mr. Taggart's presence.

Suppose after all he did intend to consult Persia on some
matter of moment to Kansas ? To leave no loop-hole unguarded,
Mary Gertrude Fendall next morning at nine o'clock took a taxi
to the Persian legation and left it on the corner. At ten o'clock
she was to ring the bell, ask for Mr. Taggart, drive him in
haste to the Capitol and deposit him in the midst of our ma-
jority. As she walked up and down, however, the problem
became acute, for how could she get him out of the legation
when he did not go in? At last, ringing the bell, seeing one
attache and then another, she became convinced that nothing was
known of the Kansas Congressman in the Persian legation, so
she telephoned us at the Capitol. ^

This confirmed our fears. Every one else was present; Mr.
Taggart was not in his office; no one knew where he was. Ten-
thirty came ; ten forty-five. There was nothing of the vanquished
in the faces of our opponents. Mr. Carlin grinned affably at
all of us, and the grin chilled us. We looked anxiously from
one to another as the meeting began. Ten supporters — ten op-

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 141

ponents. Mr. Taggart, wherever he was, had our majority. The
minutes dragged. Our friends prolonged the preliminaries. A
stranger near me pulled out his watch. I leaned over and asked
the time. " Five minutes to eleven." And just at that moment,
looking up, I saw Mr. Taggart in the doorway— Mr. Taggart,
very much of a self-satisfied, naughty little boy, smiling tri-
umphantly. That did not matter. Our majority was complete.

The committee went into executive session, and we moved to
the anteroom. " A few minutes and you'll have your Amendment
reported out," said the newspaper men. " It's all over but the
shouting." The situation was ours. Suffrage was the special
order; nothing could be considered before it, and we had a ma-
jority. As the moments passed we repeated this, trying to keep
up our courage. For time lengthened out. We eyed the door
anxiously, starting up when it opened. We caught glimpses of
the room. The members were not sitting at their places, they
were on their feet, shaking their fists.

" They're like wild animals," said one member who came out.

" But what's happening? " There was no answer. The door
closed again. ,

Slowly we learned the incredible fact. When the door had
shut upon us, Mr. Carlin immediately moved that all constitu-
tional amendments be indefinitely postponed. \

Now there were many constitutional amendments before that
committee, covering many subjects; marriage, divorce, election
of judges, a national anthem, prohibition. Mr. Carlin, to defeat
us, had thrown them all into one heap. A man could not vote
to postpone one without voting to postpone them all. He could
not vote against one without voting against them all. Were
these men actually adult human beings, legislating for a great
nation, for the welfare of a hundred million people?

The motion threw the committee into an uproar. Our friends
protested that it could not be considered; Suffrage was the spe-
cial order of the day. Mr. Moss moved that the Suffrage Amend-
ment be reported out. The chairman ruled this out of order.
Now there was a majority in that committee for Suffrage and a
majority for prohibition, but they were not the same majority.
One of the strongest Suffragists represented St. Louis with its
large breweries. If he voted against postponing the Prohibition
Amendment he could never again be re-elected from St. Louis.
Yet he could not vote to postpone it without postponing Suffrage
also.

Through the closed' door came the sound of loud, furious
voices. We caught glimpses of wildly gesticulating arms, fists in

142 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

air, contorted faces. One o'clock approached. Mr. Moss came
out and crossed quickly to the elevator. We hurried after him.

" Indefinitely postponed," he said indignantly, not wanting to
talk about it.

"But our majority?"

" We lost one."

"Who.?"

" I cannot tell." He stepped into the elevator. The other
men came trooping out. Our defeat was irrevocable, they all
said. Nothing could be done until the following December.

" You see," said Mr. Taggart, looking very jubilant for a
just-defeated Suffragist, " You women can all go home now. You
needn't have cpme at all this session. But of course you women
don't know anything about politics. We told you not to bring
up Suffrage before election. Next December, after election, we
may do something for you."

Our opponents, secure in victory, grew more friendly; but as
they warmed, our supporters became colder. Mr. Chandler flatly
refused to stay with us.

" I've voted for your Amendment twice," he said, " and I
won't vote for it again this session. That's final."

I also heard rumors of Mr. Neely's refusing to vote for it,
so I caught him in a corridor and hurried beside him, talking
as I walked.

" That true," he said. " I won't vote for it again this session.
It's no use talking. I am as unchangeable as the Medes and
Persians."

" But that's just what you said when you were receiving so
many letters that you thought we doubted you ! You said noth-
ing could "

" I've got some bills of my own to get out of this committee,"
said he, waving aside the Medes and Persians. " I won't get
them out if you keep bringing up this Suffrage. Good day."

In commenting upon the action of the Judiciary Com-
mittee, Miss Alice Paul said:

The action of the Democratic leaders at Washington in again
blocking the Suffrage Amendment by postponing indefinitely its
consideration in the Judiciary Committee is' an additional spur
to Suffragists to press forward with their plan of going out
through the Suffrage States to tell the women voters — ^particu-
larly those who are supporting the Democratic Party — of the
opposition which the Party is giving to the Federal Amendment
at Washington.

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 143

We have now labored nearly a third of a year to persuade the
Democratic leaders in Congress to allow the Amendment to be
brought before the members of the House for their consideration.
The rebuff in the committee today shows the necessity of not
delaying longer in acquainting the four million voting women
with what is going on in Congress.

Many months still remain, in all probability, before Congress
adjourns. We will do our utmost in these months to create such
a powerful party of voting women in the West as to make it
impossible for the Democratic leaders at Washington longer to
continue their course of refusing to let this measure come before
the House for even the few minutes necessary for discussion and
a vote.

Miss Younger says further:

The following Tuesday found me as usual in the Judiciary
Committee room. When I appeared in the doorway there was
a surprised but smiling greeting.

" You haven't given up yet? "

" Not until you report our Amendment."

For the first time Mr. Webb smiled. There was surprise in his
voice. " You women are in earnest about this."

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

In the meantime the work with the President was going on.
Mr. Wilson was about to make a speaking trip which in-
cluded Kansas. This would be the first time since his
inauguration that he would visit a Suffrage State.

On January 26, 1916, Mrs. William Kent and Maud
Younger waited on the President to ask him to receive a
delegation of women in a forthcoming visit to New York.
In presenting this request, Mrs. Kent sounded a note which
was beginning to become the dominant strain in the Suffrage
demands of the western women.

" Women are anxious to express to you, Mr. President,"
she said, " the depth of earnestness of the demand for
Woman Suffrage. We as western women and as citizens
are accustomed to having a request fdr political considera-
tion received with seriousness ; and we feel keenly the injus-
tice of the popular rumor that such delegations are planned
to annoy a public official. We hope that you will appreciate
the dignity and propriety of such a representative appeal as
the women of New York are now making."

President Wilson said that such an assumption was en-
tirely absent from his mind. He added that he had decided
to make it a rule during his trip to New York and through-
out the Middle West not to receive any delegations whatever,
since he would " get in wrong," as he said, if he received one
and not another; it was very possible, however, that he
might be approached by deputations which he would be able
to receive.

As Mrs. Kent and Miss Younger came out from this call
on the President, the evening papers were on the stands.

144

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 145

They announced that the next day in New York the Presi-
dent would receive fifteen hundred ministers.

On the morning of January 27, 1916, over a hundred
women, organized by Doris Stevens and led by Mrs. E.
Tiffany Dyer, assembled in the East Room of the Waldorf
Astoria Hotel. Fifteen minutes later they sent up a note
asking for a ten-minute audience with the President, that
New York women might lay their caje for federal action
upon Suffrage before him. Secretary Tumulty sent back
the following note:

For the President, I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your
note requesting a Conference with him to discuss the 'Suffrage
Amendment. I very much regret that the President's engage-
ments make it impossible to arrange this matter as you have so
generously suggested. When a representative from your com-
mittee called at the White House the President informed her of
the crowded condition of his calendar today.

Joseph Tumulty.

As this note merely said that no time had been set aside
for a deputation of women, and did not say that it would
be impossible to see him at all, a second note was sent,
asking for just five minutes and offering to wait as long as
necessary^. In the meantime, an interview between Mr.
Tumulty and Mrs. Amos Pinchot took place. Mrs. Pinchot
reported to the deputation that the President and his Sec-
retary were " conferring." For two hours the women waited,
holding a meeting. Some of the women thought it was un-
dignified to wait since the President had stated in his note
that an appointment had not been secured.

" But," said Mrs. Carol Beckwith, " why quibble about
our undignified position here in the Waldorf? Our political
position is undignified, and that is what we should remedy."

At a quarter past eleven, the President appeared.

In answer to the speeches of Mrs. Dyer, Mrs. Henry
Bruere, Mary Ritter Beard, President Wilson said :

I ought to say, in the first place, that the apologies, I think,
ought to come from me, because I had not understood that an

146 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

appointment had been made. On the contrary, I supposed none
had been made, and, therefore, had filled my morning with work,
from which it did not seem possible to escape.

I can easily understand the embarrassment of any one of your
representatives in trying to make a speech in this situation. I
feel that embarrassment very strongly myself, and I wish very
much that I had the eloquence of some of your speakers, so that
I could set my views forth as adequately as they set forth
theirs.

It may be, ladies, that my mind works slowly. I have always
felt that those things were most solidly built that were built
piece by piece, and I felt that the genius of our political develop-
ment in this country lay in the number of our States, and in the
very clear definition of the difference of sphere between the
State and Federal Government. It may be that I am a little old-
fashioned in that.

When I last had the pleasure of receiving some ladies urging
the Amendment that you are urging this morning, I told them
that my mind was unchanged, but I hoped open, and that I
would take pleasure in conferring with the leaders of my Party
and the leaders of Congress with regard to this matter. I have
not fulfilled that promise, and I hope you will understand why
I havp not fulfilled it, because there seemed to be questions of
legislation so pressing in their necessity that they ought to take
precedence of everything else; that we could postpone funda-
mental changes to immediate action along lines in the national
interest. That has been my reason, and I think it is a sufiicient
reason. The business of government is a business from day to
day, ladies, and there are things that cannot wait. However
great the principle involved in this instance, action must of neces-
sity in great fundamental constitutional changes be deliberate,
and I do not feel that I have put the less pressing in advance
of the more pressing in the course I have taken.

I have not forgotten the promise that I made, and I certaiidy
shs(ll not forget the fulfillment of it, but I want to be absolutely
frank. My own mind is still convinced that we ought to work
this thing out State by State. I did what I could to work it
out in my own State in New Jersey, and I am willing to act
there whenever it comes up; but that is so far my conviction as
to the best and solidest way to build changes of this kind, and
I for my own part see no reason for discouragement on the part
of the women of the country in the progress that this movement
has been making. It may move like a glacier, but when it does
move, its effects are permanent.

The Suffragist's Dream.

President Wilson : My dear young lady, you have saved my life.
How can I thank you?

Nina Allender in The Suffragist.

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 147

I had not expected to have this pleasure this morning, and
therefore am simply speaking offhand, and without consideration
of my phrases, but I hope in entire frankness. I thank you
sincerely for this opportunity.

Smiling the President turned to leave the room, when Mrs.
Beard reminded him that the Clayton Bill, with its far-
reaching effects on the working-man, had not been gained
State by State.

" I do not care to enter into a discussion of that," he said
sharply.

In February, President Wilson visited Kansas in his
"Preparedness Tour." As soon as it became known that
he was coming to Topeka, the heads of various. Civic and
Suffrage organizations in Kansas telegraphed him, asking for
an interview.

Secretary Tumulty answered by telegram that the
crowded condition of the Topeka program would not permit
of this arrangement.

The Kansas women telephoned that they were sure the
President could spare them five minutes, and they would
await him at the State House, immediately after the party
arranged in his honor.

When Secretary Tumulty alighted from the President's
car in Topeka, the inspired, swift, and executive Mabel
Vernon met him with a note from the Kansas women asking
the President to see them. To do this, she had had to run
the gauntlet of a large force of police. Secret Service men
and the National Guard.

Mr. Tumulty said that he could give no answer at that
time, but that later the delegation could telephone him at
Governor Capper's house, where President and Mrs. Wilson
were entertained. Governor Capper was a strong Suffragist.
The women did call later, but Secretary Tumulty explained
then that it would be impossible for the President to see
them. After much talk, an arrangement was made that the
delegation should come to the Governor's house at twenty
minutes before one. The thermometer was at zero, and snow

148 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

was falling, but the women waited before Governor Capper's
house for an hour. Finally the President came out. The
delegation, following the purple, white, and gold, marched
up the steps in double file. Lila Day Monroe made a little
speech, and handed the President the petition. The Presi-
dent murmured:

I appreciate this call very much. ... I appreciate it very
much. ... I am much obliged, much obliged. . . . Pleased
to meet you . . ."he repeated at intervals, but he gave no
expression of opinion.

After the deputation of women had filed by,~Ehe President
handed the petition to one of the Secret Service men, who
buttoned it up in his inside pocket.

FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY

The Congressional Union was now to undertake another
gigantic task — the formation of a new political Party.

For this purpose, a conference of national officers, state
officers, members of the Advisory Council of the Congressional
Union from the unenfranchised States met at the Little
White House April 8 and 9, 1916. Brilliant speeches were
made by Anne Martin and Lucy Burns. Alice Paul summed
the whole matter up in her usual convincingly incisive and
logical way:

This is the third time we iave called together the members
of our Advisory Council and our state and national officers to
lay before them a new project. The first time was at Newport
when we proposed a campaign against all Democratic candidates
for Congress in the Suffrage States. The second time was a
year ago in New York when we proposed to convert the Con-
gressional Union into a national organization with branches in
the different States. Today we want to lay another plan before
you for your consideration — ^that is the organization of a po-
litical Party of women voters who can go into this next election^
if it is necessary to go into it^ as an independent Party.

I think we are all agreed on certain essential points. First —
from what source our opposition comes. We are agreed that it
comes from the Administration. We do not have to prove that.
Second — we are agreed as to where our power lies — that is in
the Suffrage States. Third — we are agreed as to the political
situation. We know that the two Parties are about equal, that
both want to win. We know that the Suffrage States are doubt-
ful States and that every one of those States is wanted by the
political Parties. We know that many of the elections will be
close. The State of Nevada was won by only forty votes in the
last Senatorial election. In Utah it was a week before the
campaign was decided. In Colorado, the same. Going back over
a period of twenty years it would have been necessary to have

149

150 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

changed only nine per cent of the total vote cast in the presi-
dential elections in order to have thrown the election to the other
Party. This gives, us a position of wonderful power, a position
that we have never held before and that we cannot hope to hold
again for at least four years, and which we may not hold
then.

We have been working for two years to effect an organisation
in the Suffrage States and have finally completed such an organi-
zation. Our last branch was formed about ten days ago in the
State of Washington. We now have to demonstrate to the Ad-
ministration, to the majority Party in Congress, that the organi-
zation in the Suffrage States does exist and that it is a power
to be feared. There are many months still remaining, probably,
before Congress will adjourn. If in these months we can build
up so strong an organization there that it really will be dan-
gerous to oppose It, and if we can show Congress that we have
such an organization, then we will have the matter in our
hands.

We have sent a request to our branches in the East to select
one or more representative women who will go out to the West
and make a personal appeal to the women voters to stand by
us even more loyally than they have before — to form a stronger
organization than has ever before existed.

Today we must consider what concrete plan we shall ask these
envoys who go out to the West to propose to the voting women.
I do not think it will do very much good to go through the
voting States and simply strengthen our Suffrage organizations.
That will not be enough to terrify the men in Congress. Suf-
frage organizations, imfortunately, have come to stand for
feebleness of action and supineness of spirit. What I want to
propose is that when we go to these women voters we ask them
to begin to organize an independent political Party that will
be ready for the elections in November. They may not have
to go into these elections. If they prepare diligently enough
for the elections they won't have to go into them. The threat
will be enough. We want to propose to you that we ask the
women voters to come together in Chicago at the time that the
Progressives and Republicans meet there in June, to decide
how they will use these four million votes that women have, in
the next election.

Now, if women who are Republicans simply help the Repub-
lican Party, and if women who are Democrats help the Demo-
cratic Party, women's votes will not count for much. But if the
political Parties see before them a group of independent women

FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 161

voters who are standing together to use their vote to promote
Suffrage, it will make Suffrage an issue — the women voters at
once become a group which counts; whose votes are wanted.
The Parties will inevitably have to go to the women voters if
the latter stand aloof and do not go to the existing political
Parties. The political Parties will have to offer them the thing
which will win their votes. To count in an election you do not
hkve to be the biggest Party; you have to be simply an inde-
pendent Party that will stand for one object and that cannot be
diverted from that object.

Four years ago there was launched a new Party, the Pro-
gressive Party. It really did, I suppose, decide the last Presi-
dential election. We can be the same determining factor in this
coming election. And if we can make Congress realize that we
can be the determining factor, we won't have to go into the elec-
tion at all.

What I would like to propose, in short, is that we go to the
women voters and ask them to hold a convention in Chicago
the first week in June, and that we spend these next two months
in preparation. We could not have a better opportunity for
preparation than this trip of the envoys through every one of
the Suffrage States, calling the women together to meet in Chi- .
cago, the place where the eyes of the whole country will be
turned in June.

We want very much to know what you think about this plan
and whether you will help us in carrying it through. It is not
an easy thing to launch a new Party and have it stand competi-
tion with the Republican and Democratic Parties. If we under-
take it, we must make it a success. We must make it worthy
to stand beside these great Parties. That is the biggest task
that we have ever dreamed of since we started the Congressional
Union.

It was unanimously decided by the Conference to send
an appeal to all members in the SuiFrage States to- meet
in Chicago on June 6, 6, and 7, to form a Woman's
Party. Envoys to carry this appeal to the West were
elected. ,

Mrs. W. D. Ascough, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Abby
Scott Baker, Lucy Burns, Agnes Campbell, Mrs. A. R.
Colvin, Anna Constable, Edith Goode, Jane Goode,
Florence Bayard Hilles, Julia Hurlburt, Caroline Katzen-

152 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

stein, Winifred Mallon, Mrs. Cyrus Mead, Agnes Morey,
Katherine Morey, Gertrude B. Newell, Mrs. Percy Read,
Ella Riegel, Mrs. John Rogers, Mrs. Townsend Scott,
Helen Todd, Mrs. Nelson Whittemore.

All of these women were chosen by State groups of the
National Woman's Party; they therefore went to the West
as the spokesmen of the unenfranchised women of their own
States. Ahead of them went the organizers.

This Suffrage Special must not be confused with Hughes'
" Golden Special," which in October — six months later —
toured the West and with which the National Woman's
Party had no connection.

Five thousand people gathered in the Union Station at
Washington to see the envoys off — what the Washington
Times describes as a " banner-carrying, flag-waving, flower-
laden cheering crowd." Automobiles flying the tri-color
brought the envoys to the station. Two buglers sounded
the assembly for the farewell. The Naval Gun Factory
Band greeted them with the Marseillaise, and in the half-
hour before the train's departure, it continued to play
martial music. When it struck up Onward Christian Sol-
diers and America, the crowd sang with them.

The envoys made a tremendous impression in the West.
Whenever their train arrived — purple, white, and gold deco-
rations floating from all the windows — that arrival became
an event and created excitement.

" I wish you might see some of these meetings," Abby Baker
wrote to the Suffragist of April 29, " and see the looks of
amusement of the men as our train pulls in, gay with our Con-
gressional Union colors. They invariably call out, ' Here come
the Suffragettes,' but very soon they are saying, ' She's all right,'
and ' That's straight lady,' or some such approving phrase, and
as the train pulls out of the station, we hear, ' Bully for you ! ' •
' Good luck ! ' and so forth."

" At Williams, Arizona," said another letter in the same num-
ber of the Suffragist, " there was nothing in sight but a water
tank, a restaurant, a picture postal card shop, and yet we had
a tremendous meeting."

FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 153

At El Tova, in the same State, they carried the message
of the unenfranchised women of the East to the very rim of
the canyon, a mile below sea level!

Leaving very early in the morning, at Maricopa they
found a group of women waiting, who said plaintively, " Oh,
if you could only stop longer, so that we might drum up
all the women out of the sage brush ! "

It was not the people alone or the civic authorities who
made this trip of the envoys so attractive. When the Suf-
fragists came to breakfast on the road from Maricopa to
Tucson, they found that the management of the railway had
decorated the breakfast tables in the dining car with
purple, white, and gold — sweet peas and yellow laburnums.
At Tucson, Eugene. Debs came with the crowd to meet
them.

At a meeting in Cheyenne, Mrs. Blatch was presented with
a framed copy of a facsimile of the Governor's signature
attached to the act enfranchising the women of Wyoming
when the State came into the Union.

In San Francisco, where there was a large meeting in the
Civic Auditorium, presided over by Gail Laughlin, Sara
Bard Field spoke. At the close of the meeting, she asked
if the people present who put Suffrage before Party affilia-
tions would say, " I will." The audience arose as one man,
and answered roundly, " I will."

At Sacramento, California, where they were given a recep-
tion and luncheon by the Chamber of Commerce, the annual
fruit show was in progress and the envoys were presented
with an immense box of raisins and two boxes of Sacrainento
Valley cherries.

At Seattle, the station was decorated with Congressional
Union banners; the national colors; hanging baskets of
flowers. A bugler called together the big crowd — including
the Acting Mayor — ^which had gathered to welcome the
envoys.

"Ladies," Mrs. Blatch ended her speech, "we are here
after your votes." A man's voice in the audience cried:

154 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

" You'll get them," and when Mrs. Blatch said, " Men, we
need yours too," the whole crowd burst into applause.

Immediately after the address, the envoys were taken on
a tour of the city in a pirocession of a hundred and fifty
automobiles, all, of course, flying the purple, white, and
gold. They attended court, where Seattle's only woman
judge, a member of the Congressional Union, presided —
Reah Whitehead.

It was in Washington State that the doctrine of Suffrage
first reached what the Suffragist described as " the height of
its career." Lucy Burns, as the guest of Flight Lieutenant
Maroney of the Naval Militia at Washington, flew to a
height of fourteen hundred feet over Seattle, scattering
leaflets as she went. When she started. Miss Bums carried
a Congressional Union banner, but the eighty-mile-an-hour
gale soon tore it from her hand. When last seen, it reposed
gracefully on the roof of a large Seattle mill. At Belling
ham occurred one of the biggest out-of-door meetings the
envoys had had. For a solid block, the street was packed
with people from one side to the other.

At Spokane, they participated in an interesting and
rather poignant event, the planting of a tree in memory of
May Arkwright Hutton, pioneer Suffragist of Washington.

At Helena, Montana, a huge mass-meeting was held in the
Auditorium. A sand storm, which had greeted their arrival,
grew worse towards night, the wind howling louder and
louder. In the midst of Mrs. Rogers's speech the lights sud-
denly went out. She did not even hesitate, and in the
absolute darkness continued to urge women to stand by
women. There was not a sound from the audience; they
listened in perfect quiet till the end.

In one State, the Governor declared the coming of the
Suffrage Special a legal holiday. Everything on wheels
turned out to meet the envoys at the train, including the
fire engine.

A Convention at Salt Lake City on May 11 closed the
swing of the Suffrage Special round the circle of the twelve

FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 153

free States, and brought the Western tour to its highest
stage of success. The envoys passed from the station under
a great purple, white, and gold flag, through a lane of
women, their arms full of spring blossoms, to a long line of
waiting automobiles flying banners of purple, white, and
gold.

The Convention passed resolutions demanding from Con-
gress favorable action on the Suffrage Amendment in the
present session and elected three women voters to carry these
resolutions to Congress.

These women accompanied the envoys to Washington.
There they were welcomed by a luncheon in the Union Sta-
tion. Then, in automobiles, brilliantly decbrated, they drove
through streets lined with huge posters which said come to
THE CAPITOL. As they approached the Capitol, two buglers,
from the broad platforms at the top of the high, wide stair-
way, alternately sounded a note of triumphant welcome. A
huge chorus of women in white sang America. Through
the aisle formed on the Capitol steps by ribbons held in the
hands of other women in white, the envoys passed up the
steps into the Rotunda. In the Rotunda, they grouped
themselves into a semi-circle facing another semi-circle —
nearly a hundred Senators and Representatives. The
Senate had taken a recess especially to meet these
women.

The envoys, elected at the Salt Lake City Convention, then
presented to the assembled Congressmen the resolutions
passed at that Convention and speeches followed.

While the envoys were rousing the West, the Congressional
Union was sending deputations to great political leaders in
the hope of getting declarations of support which would
influence the coming National Political Conventions. To a
deputation consisting of Mary Beard, Elizabeth Gerberding,
Alice Carpenter, and Mrs. Evan Evans, Theodore Roosevelt,
who had long been converted to the principle of Suffrage,
announced himself in favor of the Federal Amendment and
promised his active support in the campaign. This was of

156 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

course an encouraging episode in the story of the National
Amendment.

Three weeks later came the next important event in the
history of the Congressional Union — the launching of a
Woman's Party on July 6 at the Blackstone Theatre in
Chicago, At this time Chicago was the center of publicity;
the strategic point as far as the press was concerned. The
Woman's Party Convention met before the Conventions of
the Republicans and Democrats. The reporters, gathered
there and waiting in idleness for these later occasions, looked
upon the Woman's Party Convention as a gift of the gods.

Helena Hill Weed presented a report of the Credentials
Committee, of which she was Chairman. She said:

This is not a delegated body.

It is a mass convention of all members of the Congressional
Union to form a Woman's Party, made up of enfranchised
women of the eleven full Suffrage States, and of Illinois, where
women may vote for President of the United States.

There are two classes of delegates in this convention — mem-
bers of the Union in these twelve Suffrage States, who have the
right to speak and vote in the convention; and members of the
Union in the thirty-six unfree States, who may speak from the
floor, but may not vote.

As registration is still going on, it is impossible to give a
final vote of the number of delegates attending. Over fifteen
hundred delegates have already registered.

Maud Younger was temporary Chairman of the Conven-
tion and keynote speaker. She said in part:

A new force marches on to the political field. For the first
time in a Presidential election women are a factor to be reck-
oned with. Four years ago, women voted in six States — ^today in
twelve, including Illinois. These States with their four million
women constitute nearly one-fourth of the electoral college and
more than one-third of the votes necessary to elect a President.
With enough women organized in each State to hold the balance
of power, the women's votes may determine the Presidency of
the United States.

FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 157

The Woman's Party has no candidates and but one plank, the
enfranchisement of the women of America through a Federal
Amendment.

Anne Martin was chosen permanent Chairman of the
Party; Phoebe A. Hearst, Judge Mary A. Bartelme, Vice-
Chairmen; Mabel Vernon, Secretary.

The Party platform, adopted unanimously amid cheers,
re^ds :

The National Woman's Party stands for the passage of the
Amendment to the United States Constitution known as the Susan
B. Anthony Amendment, proposing an Amendment to the Con-
stitution of the United States extending the right of Suflfrage,
to women:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of
each House concurring therein) that the following article be pro-
posed in the legislatures of the several States as an Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by
three-fourths of the said legislatures, shall be valid as part of
such Constitution, namely:

Article 1, Section 1. The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. Congress shall have power, by appropriate legisla-
tion, to enforce the provisions of this article.

The National Woman's Party, convinced that the enfranchise-
ment of women is the paramount issue, pledges itself to use its
united vote to secure the passage of the 'Susan B. Anthony
Amendment, irrespective of the interests of any national political
Party, and pledges its unceasing opposition to all who oppose
this Amendment.

Sara Bard Field closed that first meeting with an eloquent
invocation to the spirit of freedom, quoting from Alfred
Wallace the words he used just, before his death:

All my long life and investigations have shown me that there
is one supreme force needed in the universe for growth, either
material or spiritual, physical or mental — and that force is
freedom.

168 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

An evening session of the Woman's Party Convention, held
also at the Blackstone Theatre, was made interesting and
picturesque by the presence of representatives of all the
political Parties.

The Convention appointed women representing the
Woman's Party, to speak at the Republican, Democratic,
and Progressive Conventions.

Incidental to the Convention a big " Suffrage First "
luncheon was given in the Auditorium Hotel. So many hun-
dreds of applicants for tickets had to be refused that finally
tickets of admission for standing room were sold. Every
inch of steps was occupied when the luncheon began. Re-
markable speeches were made by Rheta Childe Dorr, the
famous publicist, and one of the early editors of the Suf-
fragist; by Crystal Eastman, one of the founders of the
Congressional Union, brilliant speaker, writer, and editor;
Inez MiDiolland Boissevain, who, before the year was out,
was to end, with such tragic abruptness, a vivid and devoted
life; Helen Keller, whose unexampled achievement is known
to the whole world.

The publicity which the Woman's Party received was ex-
traordinary. The Convention lasted three days and the
meetings were packed. Arthur Brisbane pointed out the
difference between the clock-like organization of the women
and the hap-hazard organization of the men.

Ida M. Tarbell, describing the Woman's Party in the
Kew York World of June 7 and 8, 191G, says:

The new Woman's Party had permitted representation of five
different political Parties to appear before them and briefly
present their various claims to the Suffrage of women. " We do
not ask you here to tell us what we can do for your Parties, but
what your Parties can do for us," Miss Martin told the speakers
in a tone of exultant sweetness which sent a cheer from shore to
shore of the human sea that filled the house. . . .

" Votes don't matter," Benson shouted at them, " nothing but
education matters. Women, like men, don't know how to vote.
Nevertheless, if you have nothing but ignorance you have a right
to contribute that. As for the Socialists, we shall continue to

^FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 169

vote for Suffrage^ as we always have done, if no women vote for
us."

Much as they gasped at Benson's defiance of their " power,"
they took it like sports, and sent him to his seat with rounds of
cheers and long waving of their lovely banners. (They have a
wonderful eye for color, these new politicians.)

But when Mr. Hammond — confident and bland — assured them
the Republican Party offered them protection from invaders,
they jeered at him. He did not understand that they are their
own protectors and war scares are not going to stampede them.

Another thing that the gentlemen must have noticed — used as
they are to the same game — and that was, that no amount of
eloquence made the faintest scratch on the rock-ribbed determina-
tion of the women. The one and only thing they wanted to
know, so the women told the men after they had gone through
their ordeals, was whether or no they proposed to support the
Susan B. Anthony Amendment. That was the only possible
interest they had in what the gentlemen could say. Was it, yes
or no?

The Republican and Progressive Conventions began in
Chicago the day the Woman's Party Convention ended.
The delegates elected by the women spoke before the Reso-
lution Committee of both these Conventions.

The hearing before the Republicans was held in the vast
Coliseum. Representatives of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association addressed the Committee. Anti-Suf-
fragists followed. In closing, their last speaker said :

" We will now leave you to the tender mercies of those
who demand."

The Woman's Party then took the hearing in charge.

The hearing of the Woman's Party before the Progressive
Convention was held at eight o'clock the same evenjng in the
South Parlor of the Auditorium Hotel.

Later, members of the Woman's Party went to St. Louis
where the Democrats were holding their Convention. When
they arrived they found there was no room in the hotel which
could be used for Headquarters. Most of them, a little
discouraged, went in to breakfast. While they sat at the
table, a newspaper man approached. " Where are your

160 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Headquarters ? " he asked. " Here," Alice Paul answered
instantly. After breakfast she chose a table in a conspicuous
part of the hotel lobby ; covered it with Woman's Party lit-
erature, hung a purple, white, and gold banner back of it.
The hotel, seething with the activity due to the fact that
Democratic Headquarters was there, took no notice of what
she was doing. Nobody said anything to her. Gradually
Alice Paul hung purple, white, and gold banners everywhere
in that comer of the lobby. Nobody remonstrated. Per-
haps by this time, the hotel authorities decided that her
color scheme was decorative. At any rate, the Woman's
Party maintained that corner as Headquarters. It was a
conspicuous spot; everybody had to pass it to go to the
elevator. They could not have hired a place so advan-
tageously situated.

Newspaper cartoonists began to introduce the new Party
into their pictures. Alice Paul in the figure of a little deer,
big-eyed and wistful, stood timidly among a group which
included the elephant, the donkey and the bull moose.

The Woman's Party found every sentiment in favor of
Suffrage among the Democratic delegates until Secretary
of War Baker arrived from Washington bringing the plat-
form drawn up by Wilson. Then the atmosphere changed.
Newspaper men, who told the Woman's Party delegates of
the encouraging condition earlier, now said : " There is no
chance of getting what you want."

When later the Resolutions Committee met, representa-
tives from the Woman's Party waited all night outside the
door in a last effort to influence the members of the Com-
mittee going in and out of the Committee Rooms. The entire
platform was accepted, with very slight changes, as it had
been originally drafted in Washington. It contained a
recommendation that the question of Woman Suffrage be
confined to the States.

The Progressives endorsed National Suffrage. This was
the first time a national political Party had ever endorsed
the Federal Amendment ; for although the Progressives, the

FORMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 161

Socialists, and the Prohibitionists had endorsed the principle
of Suffrage in 1912, they had apparently never heard of the
principle of Federal Suffrage. The platforms of the other
two Parties were unsatisfactory as far as the Federal Amend-
ment was concerned.

The Republican Suffrage plank was :

The Republican Party, reaffirming its faith in a government of
the people, by the people, and for the people, as a measure of
justice to one-half the adult population of this country, favors
the extension of Suffrage to women, but recognizes the right of
each State to settle this question for itself.

The Democratic Suffrage plank ran:

We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of
the country by the States upon the same terms as to men.

These two planks also marked a great advance ; for it was
the first time the major political Parties had ever mentioned
Suffrage.

Now every effort of the Woman's Party was directed to
getting the Presidential candidates, Wilson and Hughes, to
come out for National Suffrage.

Alice ^Paul's campaign, conducted on Hughes, was par-
ticularly vigorous. It was nation-wide in its extent. She
sent telegrams all over the country asking people to urge
this upon him. She sent numberless women to plead with
Hughes. She sent women to Roosevelt and to other promi-
nent Republicans and Progressives to get them to use their
influence with Hughes. Every Republican member of Con-
gress was lobbied to write to Hughes or to see him.

Hughes found himself bombarded. Letters inundated him
from all over the nation. Newspapers besieged him with
editorials. Most important of all, Alice Paul herself went
to him. Then it was that she presented an unanswerable
argument which has already been quoted.

162 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Yotir Party consists of two factions, the old stand-pat Re-
publicans and the Progressives. Now if you put a Suffrage
plank in your platform, you will not alienate the Progressives,
because the Progressives have a Suffrage plank and the old
stand-pat Republicans will not vote for a Democrat, no matter
what you put in your platform.

At a great mass-meeting in Carnegie Hall, Hughes ac-
cepted the nomination. He did not, however, satisfactorily
mention Woman Suffrage. That evening an unknown man
came up to the box where Alice Paul was sitting and intro-
ducing himself as Hughes's representative, asked her what she
thought of the program. " Utterly unsatisfactory," said
Alice Paul ; " it did not mention Federal Suffrage." That
night Alice Paul and other Suffragists went early to the
public reception given to Hughes at the Hotel Astpr. They
told every Senator, Congressman, and plain individual whom
they knew there : " When you congratulate Mr. Hughes, tell
him how disappointed you were that he did not mention
Federal Suffrage."

In a telegram sent on August 1 to Senator Sutherland
of Utah, Hughes declared himself in favor of the Federal
Amendment. It was the first time any Presidential candi-
date of either of the two big political Parties had publicly
declared the Federal Amendment a part of his policy.

On June 19, President Wilson sent to Mrs. Carrie Chap-
man Catt, president of the National American Woman Suf-
frage Association, the following letter, which is a reply to a
telegram from her asking what the Suffrage plank in the
Democratic platform meant:

My dear Mrs. Catt:

I was away from the city and did not get your telegram of
June sixteenth promptly.

I am very glad to make my position about the Suffrage plank
adopted by the convention clear to you, though I had not thought
that it was necessary to state again a position I have repeatedly
stated with entire frankness. The plank received my entire

FOKMING THE WOMAN'S PARTY 163

approval before its adoption and I shall support its principle
with sincere pleasure. I wish to join my fellow-Democrats in
i'ecommending to the several States that they extend the Suf-
frage to women upbn the same ,terms as to men.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WooDRow Wilson.

STILL MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

On June 12, 1916, Sara Bard Field sent a telegram to
President Wilson. Mrs. Field was a Democrat, but she was,
first ,of all, a Suffragist. In that telegram, she urged the
President to support the Suffrage Amendment. She prom-
ised, if the Democratic Party would do this, that she herself
would gladly campaign for him in the Western States with-
out remuneration. She promised him also the services of
at least five other influential Democratic women. The Presi-
dent answered:

Dear Mrs. Field:

Your frank and kindly telegram of June 12 sent from St.
Louis was warmly appreciated. I have been in frequent con-
ference with my Party associates about a platform declaration
with regard to Woman Suffrage and sincerely hope the outcome
has been acceptable to you.

In haste, with sincerest appreciation.

Cordially yours,

WooDROW Wilson.

On June 21, President Wilson received Mrs. D. E. Hooker
of Richmond, who came to him as a delegate from the Vir-
ginia Federation of Labor. Mrs. Hooker placed in the
President's hands resolutions passed by the Federation, de-
manding favorable action on the Federal Amendment this
session.

" This is very strong," said President Wilson.

The Suffragist of July 1 says:

Mrs. Hooker then urged upon the President, very movingly,
the humiliation, from the standpoint of a Southerner and a
woman, of going before the entire population of men now en-
franchised, and begging them each personally to approve of

164

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 165

woman's right to full citizenship. Tears came into her eyes as
she spoke, and the President seemed rather touched. He said
consolingly that she must not mind the criticism she encountered
in a good work. " Every one in the public eye," the President
said, " is deluged with criticism. You simply must do what you
believe to be right."

Mrs. Hooker went on to explain the political difficulties of the
State by State road to National Woman Suffrage.

President Wilson seemed very little impressed by these facts.
" Every good thing," he said, " takes a great deal of hard work."

Mrs. Hooker made a very strong point of the indefensible
behavior of the House Judiciary Committee in blocking the
Suffrage Amendment and refusing to allow the representatives
of the people an opportunity to vote upon it. " Whatever one
may think of Woman Suffrage," she said, " tying the Amend-
ment up this way before an election is wrong ; and the blame will
fall squarely on the Democratic Party."

" You must see the members of the Judiciary Committee about
that," said, the President, with a considerable tactical skill. " I
do not think I should interfere with the action of a Committee of
Congress."

" Have you never done it before, Mr. President ? " asked Mrs.
Hooker. The President explained that he had done it only under
pressure of a national emergency.

The interview lasted about half an hour. The President's
manner was kindly and friendly, but he made it very plain that
he interpreted the Democratic platform pla6k to mean the limita-
tion of the Suffrage movement to State activities, and that he was
still opposed to the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Later, Mrs. Field replied to the President's letter:

I am sorry to have to tell you that not only is the platform
declaration not acceptable to me, and to hundreds of thousands
of voting women of the West, but that we also greatly deprecate
the interpretation which you gave of this plank to Mrs. D. E.
Hooker of Richmond.

It is my sincere hope as a Democratic woman that you will
not allow any menace to the Democratic Party in the fall
election through your unwillingness to face the desire of the
West for speedy action upon the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

On July 3, a delegation representing the Woman's Na-
tional Democratic League, composed, according to the

166 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Washington Times, of some of the most distinguished ladies
of the Congressional and official sets, went to inform the
President that the League had raised a thousand dollars as
a contribution towards his re-election. Afterwards, Mrs.
F. B. Moran, a grand-niece of Martha Washington, and it
may be almost unnecessary to state, a member of the Con-
gressional Union, requested a five minute interview with the
President.

Mrs. Moran said:

I am really afraid for my Paifty. The women in the West
are far superior to us. They have power, and they know how
to use it. There are four million of them, and they are heartily
in favor of the Federal Suffrage Amendment because they do
not wish to be disfranchised jrhen they pass beyond the limits
of their own State. It is not a question of their threatening us.
It is a question of our realizing what they are going to do.' You
can get the Suffrage Amendment through Congress, and, if you
do not do it, these women will regard you as responsible.

President Wilson said, in answer, that he could not inter-
fere with the action of Congress. He believed that Suffrage
should be established on the secure foundation of separate
State action. " You should work from the bottom up, not
from the top down," the President said. " Women should
be patient, and continue to work in the admirable way they
have worked in the past."

On July 4, President Wilson reviewed a Labor parade in
connection with the laying of the corjier-stone of the Labor
Temple of the American Federation of Labor in Washing-
ton, D. C, and at its close he addressed the marchers. He
h^d just declared that he stood for the interests of all
classes, when Mabel Vernon, who sat on the platform a few
feet away, called in a voice which has a notably clear, ring-
ing quality, " Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to for-
ward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the
national enfranchisement of women?"

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 167

The President answered, " That is one of the things which
we will have to take counsel over later."

When the President was closing his speech, Mabel Vernon
called again ; " Answer, Mr. President, why do you oppose
the national enfranchisement of women ? "

The President did not answer.

The Secret Service men with almost an exquisite courtesy
gently hurried Miss Vernon away.

On July 24, another deputation of prominent Democratic
women called on the President. The deputation included
Mrs. George W. Lamont, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Mina
Van Winkle, Helen Todd. I quote the Suffragist:

Mrs. Lamont, who introduced the group to President Wilson,
said: " I have come to you, Mr. President, as a Democratic
woman. I used to be first a Democrat and then a Suffragist;
now I am a Suffragist first." She asked the President if he
realized how painful a position he created for Demoeiratic women
when he opposed the enfranchisement of their sex and forced
them to chose between their Party allegiance and their loyalty
to women throughout the nation.

Mrs. Blatch told President Wilson of the strength of the
sentiment for Woman Suffrage she had found in the West on
her recent trip in the Suffrage Special through the equal Suf-
frage States and of the extraordinary difficulties she had experi-
enced in her own life trying to win Suffrage by amending the
constitution of her State.

" I am sixty years old, Mr. President/' said Mrs. Blatch, " I
have worked all my life for Suffrage; and I am determined that
I will never again stand up on the street corners of a great city
appealing to every Tom/ Dick, and Harry for the right of self-
government. When we work for a Federal Amendment, we are
dealing at last with men who~ understand what we are talking
about and can speak to us in our tongue. We are not asking
for an easy way to win the vote. It is not easy to amend the
United States Constitution. We are asking for a dignified way;
and we ought to be able to rely on the chivalry of our repre-
sentatives, particularly of the southern representatives, to accord
to women a self-respecting method of working out their en-
franchisement."

168 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Miss Helen Todd told the President of her experience in a
State campaign in Texas, when Democratic members of the
Legislature refused to submit the question to the voters, saying
bluntly that they controlled eleven votes in the upper house and
that those eleven could keep the Suffrage Amendment " tied up "
indefinitely. " Women go to Democrats in Congress and are told
they must appeal to State Legislatures. They go to Democratic
State Legislatures, who refuse to allow the electors of their own
State to vote upon the question at all. " What are women to do,
Mr. President?" said Miss Todd, "when they are played with
in this cat and mouse fashion? "

The interview was in many respects interesting. President
Wilson did not mention the States' rights formula. He said he
was imable to help the Suffrage Amendment in Congress because
his Party was opposed to it. It was the President's theory, he
explained, that a Party leader should not go so far in advance of
his adherents as to withdraw himself from them, and make
united action impossible upon the other issues before the country.

The impression was strongly conveyed, however, that this
opposition from the President's Party was not necessarily
permanent. " In four years, or in two years," said Mr. Wilson,
impressively but vaguely, " the situation might be different. At
present many members of the Democratic Party are opposed to
Woman Suffrage on account of the negro question." " But,"
said one of his visitors, " if women were given the vote through-
out the United States the percentage of the white vote to the
negro vote would be increased." " You have not explained that
to the men in Congress," President Wilson said.

In answer to the statement that the Democratic Party would
lose the support of women in the West and therefore of western
electoral votes if they persisted in opposing women's national
enfranchisement, President Wilson said he did not believe women
would vote in a national election on the Suffrage issue. " If they
did that," said Mr. Wilson, with superb and quite unconscious
insolence, " they would not be as intelligent as I think they are."

The women came away from this meeting convinced that
the President would do nothing for the Federal Amendment.

On September 8, however, President Wilson spoke at At-
lantic City before a Convention of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. It was the first time he had
ever addressed a Suffrage meeting. That was, of course, in
itself, significant. I quote the Suffragist:

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 169

I have found it a real privilege to be here tonight and to
listen to the address which you have heard. Though you may
not all of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear some
one else speak than speak myself, but I should feel that I was
omitting a duty if I did not address you tonight and say some of
the things that have been in my thoughts as I realized the ap-
proach of this evening and the duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about this movement which you represent
is not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so
rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the
struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous
path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating
force of this movement in recent decades, you must agree with
me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history.

Two generations ago, no doubt. Madam President will agree
with me in saying it was a handful of women who were fighting
this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are fight-
ing it. And there are some interesting historical connections
which I wquld like to attempt to point out to you. One of the
most striking facts about the history of the United States is that
at the outset it was a lawyer's history.

There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know
enough to run the government of the United States, and a dis-
tinguished English publicist once remarked, speaking of the
complexity of the American government, that it was no proof
of the excellence of the American Constitution that it had been
successfully operated, because the Anaerican could run any con-
stitution. But there have been a great many technical difficulties
in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose in this
country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at
the bottom a human question, and nothing but a question of
humanity. That was the slavery question, and is it not sig-
nificant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women
became prominent in politics in America? Not many women.
Those prominent in that day are so few that you can almost
name them over in a brief catalogue, but nevertheless, they then
began to play a part in writing not only, but in public speech,
which was a very novel part for women to play in America; and
after the Civil War had 'settled some of what seemed the most
difiicult legal questions of our system, the life of the nation began
not only to unfold but to accumulate.

Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter
at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that under-

170 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

ground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only
a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has
told tonight were uncommon in those simpler days.

The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unre-
munerated toil did not exist in America in anything the same
proportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded
and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the
populations have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of
the country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the
whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They
have ceased to be legal questions. They have more and more
become social questions — questions with regard to the relations
of human beings to one another — not merely their legal relations,
but their moral and spiritual relations to one another.

And this has been most characteristic of American life in the
last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater
and greater prpminence, the movement which this association
represents has gathered cumulative force. So that if anybody
asks himself, " What does this gathering force mean ? " if he
knows anything about the history of the country, he knows that
it means something that has not only come to stay, but has come
with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the
channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to
prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it
which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely
because the women are discontented. It is because the women
have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not
only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish
to resist.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this
sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself.

I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of
the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic
City I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct
myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with
somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things, that
when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is
rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not
come to its flood.

We feel the tide: we rejoice in the strength of it and we shall
not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because,
when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies
of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along.

MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 171

The whole art and practice of government consists, not in moving
individuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to run
ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for the
mass to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because
you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was
a force behind you that will, beyond any peradventnre, be tri-
umphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

This speech is, of course, often exquisitely phrased. How-
ever, it promised nothing. The Woman's Party was not
deceived by it.

It is to be seen that President Wilson was moving —
slowly, to be sure ; one cautious foot carefully planted before
the other cautious foot moved- — in the right direction. He
had progressed a measurable distance from the man who just
after his inauguration admitted he had never considered the
subject of Suffrage. However, he still held to his idea of
the " State-by-State " progress for the enfranchisement of
women. But he was to change even in that, as will subse-
quently be seen.

THE SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS

On Augast 10, 11, and 12, of 1916, the newly fonned Na-
tional Woman's Party held a conference at the Hotel Antlers
in Colorado Springs, to formulate a policy for the coming
presidential campaign.

In Washington, Senators and Representatives read avidly
the newspaper accounts of this convention.

Politically, it was a tremendously impressive gathering.
Prominent women came from all the Western States to decide
how they should endeavor to mobilize the women's votes.
Greatly alarmed at this drifting away of members, the
Democratic Party sent prominent Democratic women to
plead with them not to leave the Party and to represent to
them that Peace was more important than Suffrage. The
Republicans sent important Republican women to plead with
them to give their support to Hughes since he had come out
for the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Finally the Democratic leaders appealed to the President
to counteract the attacks being made on the Party, on the
score of its Suffrage record. The President, thereupon, des-
patched to the Thomas Jefferson Club of Denver the fol-
lowing letter which was read at a banquet the last day of
the Conference.

The White House,
Washington, D. C, August 7, 1916.
My dear Friends:

I wish I could meet you face to face and tell you in person
how deeply I appreciate the work your organization has done
and proposes to do for the cause of democracy and popular
government.

I am told that yours was the first woman's Democratic voters'
organization in America, and I am sure that as such it must have

172

SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 173

been the instrument of impressing your convictions very deeply
upon the politics of your State.

One of the strongest forces behind the Equal Suffrage senti-
ment of the country is the now demonstrated fact that in the
Suffrage States women interest themselves in public questions,
study them thoroughly, form their opinions and divide as men
do concerning them. It must in frankness be admitted that there
are two sides to almost every important public question, and even
the best informed persons are bound to differ in judgment con-
cerning it. With each difference in judgment, it is not only
natural, but right and patriotic, that the success of opposing
convictions should be sought through political alignment and the
measuring of their strength at the polls through political agencies.
Men do this naturally, and so do women; though it has required
your practical demonstration of it to convince those who doubted
this. In proportion as the political development of women con-
tinues along this line, the cause of Equal Suffrage will be pro-
moted.

Those who believe in Equal Suffrage are divided into those who
believe that each State should determine for itself when and in
what direction the Suffrage should be extended, and those who
believe that it should be immediately extended by the action of
the national government, by means of an amendment to the Fed-
eral Constitution. Both the great political Parties of the nation
have in their recent platforms favored the extension of Suffrage
to women through State action, and I do not see how their can-
didates can consistently disregard these official declarations. I
shall endeavor to make the declaration of my own Party in this
matter effectual by every influence that I can properly and
legitimately exercise.

Woman's part in the progress of the race, it goes without
saying, is quite as important as man's. The old notion, too, that
Suffrage and service go hand in hand, is a sound one, and women
may well appeal to it, though it has long been invoked against
them. The war in Europe has forever set at rest the notion that
nations depend in time of stress wholly upon their men. The
women of Europe are bearing their full share of war's awful
burden in the daily activities of the struggle, and more than their
share as sufferers. Their fathers and husbands and sons are
fighting and dying in the trenches; but they have taken up the
work on the farms, at the mill, and in the workshop and counting
houses. They bury the dead, care for the sick and wounded,
console the fatherless, and sustain the constant shock of war's
appalling sacriiices.

174 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

From these hideous calamities we in this favored land of ours
have thus far been shielded. I shall be profoundly thankful, if,
consistently with the honor and integrity of the nation, we may
maintain to the end our peaceful relations with the world.
Cordiallj- and sincerely yours,

WooDEOW Wilson.
To the officers and members of the
Jane Jefferson Club of Colorado.

The Woman's Party did not care for whom the women
cast their protest vote — Republicans, Socialists, Prohibi-
tionists— they cared only that women should not vote for the
Democrats. They knew if this protest vote was large
enough, whoever was elected would realize that opposition
to Suffrage was inexpedient.

At Colorado Springs the National Woman's Party passed
the following resolutions:

Resolved that the National Woman's Party, so long as the
opposition of the Democratic Party continues, pledges itself to
use its best efforts in the twelve States where women vote for
President to defeat the Democratic candidate for President; and
in the eleven States where women vote for members of Congress
to defeat the candidates of the Democratic Party for Congress.

Immediately the campaign began. It was the biggest cam-
paign— the most important ever waged by the Woman's
Party. A stream of organizers started for the Western
States to prepare the way for the speakers. How hard, and
how long, and how intensively these girl organizers worked
will never be known because, in the very nature of things,
there could be no adequate record of their efforts. Then
came a stream of speakers, relay after relay — convinced,
informed, experienced — and inspired. Among them were
Harriot Stanton Blatch, Sara Bard Field, Ida Finney Mack-
rille, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, Helen
Todd, Maud Younger, Rose Winslow, Gail Laughlin. The
brilliant, beautiful Inez MilhoUand Boissevain, doomed soon
to die so untimely but so glorious a death, was appointed
special flying envoy to make a twelve mile swing through

SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 175

the twelve western Equal Suffrage States; to bring to the
enfranchised women of the West an appeal for help from the
disfranchised women of the East.

The campaign of 1916 was characterized by the swiftness
of attack and efficiency of method which characterized the
campaign of 1914, but it was carried out on a much larger
scale. In Washington, Headquarters boiled . . . bubbled
. . . seethed. . . .

From Washington there sifted into the West tons of cam-
paign literature : miles of purple, white, and gold banners ;
acres of great across-the-street streamers. In the West
itself, Woman's Party speakers addressed every kind of
meeting known to our civilization: indoor meetings; out-
door meetings; luncheons; banquets; labor unions, business
men's organizations; in churches, factories, theatres; at
mining camps, county fairs. They took advantage of im-
promptu meetings in the streets ; small ready-made meetings
at clubs; large advertised mass-meetings. And Inez Mil-
holland's activities as a flying envoy — and in that, her last
fight she did fly — ^were the climax of it all.

The slogan of the Wilson party was, " He kept us out of
war." The slogan of the Woman's Party developed, " He
kept us out of Suffrage."

The Democrats, remembering the results of the campaign
of 1914, were far from indulgent of this small army, the
members of which were all generals.

In Denver, Elsie Hill the Woman's Party organizer was
arrested and hurried to the police station in a patrol wagon.
The only charge against her was that she had distributed
literature telling the Democratic record on Suffrage.

In Colorado Springs, the Federal Amendment banner was
"arrested" and locked up for the night in jail.

In Chicago, described by the Chicago Tribune as the
" pivotal point of the 1916 election," this hostility was much
more violent. The day that Wilson spoke there a hundred
women, some of them carrying inscribed banners, stationed
themselves at the entrance to the auditorium where he was

176 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

to appear. They were attacked by groups of men, who tore
their banners out of their hands, and demolished them. Sev-
eral women were thrown to the ground, and one, still cling-
ing to the banner, was dragged across the street.

This was followed by an attack upon Minnie E. Brooke,
one of the Woman's Party speakers. She was alone, walk-
ing quietly down Michigan Boulevard. She had a small
purple, white, and gold flag in her hand, and was wearing
the regalia of the Woman's Party. Suddenly two men darted
up to her, and tried to tear her colors away. In the struggle
she was thrown down and would have fallen in front of an
automobile had not a hotel employee run to her assist-
ance.

However, in the out-of-way country places in the Western
States, the Woman's Party speakers were received with that
hearty hospitality, that instant and instinctive chivalry,
which marks the West. In this campaign, they made a point
of appearing in the State and County Fairs which charac-
terized the late summer and early fall months.

On Frontier Day, at the Douglas County Grange at Castle
Rock, Colorado, Elsie Hill spoke — to a grandstand crowded
with people-^between the end of the relay race (in which
the riders changed horses and saddles) and the beginning of
the steer-roping contest. On the stand were massed men,
women, and children. Just over the fence crowded hundreds
of cowboys and farmers.

Street processions also characterized this campaign. At
night in Salt Lake City occurred an extraordinary parade —
a river of yellow. The squad of mounted policemen who
headed the procession wore the purple, white, and gold re-
galia of the Woman's Party. Marching women carried
lighted yellow Japanese lanterns. The people who filled
the automobiles carried yellow lanterns. The huge Amend-
ment banner was yellow. Yellow banners were strung across
the streets.

Billboards and posters appeared everywhere which ad-
jured voters not to support Wilson or any Democratic can-

SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 177

didates for Congress. In Tucson and Prescott, Arizona,
these great banners were surreptitiously cut down. In Cali-
fornia, the Democrats placed counter placards beside these
disturbing posters. In San Francisco, armed patrols
guarded the two conflicting posters in one hotel lobby.

The Woman's Party speakers took advantage of all kinds
of situations. In one town, Maud Younger found that a
circus had arrived just ahead of her. There was no ade-
quate hall for a meeting; and so the circus men offered her
their tent; they even megaphoned her meeting for her. In
another town, a County Fair was being held. Maud Younger
appealed to the clowns to give her a chance to speak, and
they let her have their platform and the spot-light while
they were changing costumes. In San Francisco, Hazel
Hunkins scattered thousands of leaflets from an aeroplane
flying over the city. Red Lodge, Montana, sent to the train,
which brought Abby Scott Baker to them, a delegation of
members of the Grand Army of the Republic, the leader
bearing a large American flag. They conducted her in
state through the town to the hall where she was to speak.

Perhaps no campaign was more interesting than that of
Rose Winslow in Arizona. Vivian Pierce, whose experienced
newspaper hand on the Suffragist helped to make that paper
the success it so swiftly became, thus describes her work :

Rose Winslow represented the workers. She spoke for the
exploited women in Eastern industry. In her own person to
her audiences she typified her story of those imprisoned in fac-
tories and slums, unable to fight their own battles. Her words
had the authenticity of an inspired young evangelist. She herself
had come up out of that darkness; and the men of the mines
and lumber camps, the women of the remote Arizona towns,
listened to her with tears pouring down their faces. One does
not see Eastern audiences so moved. At Winslow . . . this
girl, pleading for working women, the most exploited class in
industry, appealed to the men of the great Santa Fe railroad
shops that animate the life of that remote region on the edge
of the " Painted Desert." Rose Winslow had been warned that
if she spoke at this town, she would be " mobbed " by the Wilson
Democrats. After her impassioned story, told one noon hour, the

178 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

men of the shops crowded around this young woman from the
£ast, " one of our own people," as one man said, and asked her
what they could do for the women of the East. . . .

In the remote copper camps around Jerome and Bisbee, the
story of the industrial workers who have merely asked for a
chance to help themselves, made a deep impression on the foreign-
born voters of this section. There were Poles, Finns, and
Lithuanians in the great audience held in that copper town that
is the working-man's annex to Bisbee. That audience both
laughed and cried with Rose Winslow, and then crowded around
to greet her in her own language.

From the vividly colored fastness of the miners' villages in this
wild mountain region, to border towns like Nogales, though but
a short step geographically, the temper and character of the
cities change. ... In places like Nogales, the soldiers who
could not go home to vote turned the Woman's Party meetings
into near-riots, so anxious were these victims of a peace adminis-
tration to hear what the ladies had to say about Wilson. The
soldiers registered their approval by helping take up collections,
though even the provost guard could not remove them to give
space to citizens able to register their protests.

An event equally picturesque marked the closing of the
campaign on the night of Sunday, November 5, on the plat-
form of the Blackstone Theatre, Chicago. There, Harriot
Stanton Blatch, acting as the spokesman of the disfran-
chised women of the East, called up by long-distance tele-
phone a series of mass-meetings, one in each of the twelve
Suffrage States and' repeated their message — a final appeal
to the women voters of the West to cast their ballots on the
following Tuesday against; President Wilson.

The result of the election is summed up in the Suffragist
of November 11:

In Illinois, the only State where the vote of women is counted
separately, over seventy thousand more women voted against Mr.
Wilson than for him. . . .

The reports indicate that the Woman's Party campaign was
as successful in holding the woman's vote in line in the other
eleven States as in Illinois. While ten of these States went for
Wilson, they did not do so, as has been claimed, by the woman's

SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 179

vote. Mr. Wilson received in these States almost the solid Labor
vote, the Progressive, and the farmer's vote. The popular ma-
jority which Mr. Wilson received in the twelve Suffrage States
amounted only to twenty-two thousand one hundred seventy-one
out of a popular vote, according to the latest returns, of more
than four million, eight hundred and ten thousand in the same
States. This does not include the Socialist and Prohibition vote,
which was very heavy in some of the Western States. . . .

We were not concerned with the result of the election. Ours
was a campaign in which it made no difference who was elected.
We did not endorse any candidate. We did not care who won.
We were not pro-Republican, pro-Socialist, pro-Prohibition — we
were simply pro-woman. We did not endeavor to affect the result
in the non-Suffrage States. What we did try to do was to
organize a protest vote by women against Mr. Wilson's attitude
towards Suffrage. This we did. Every Democrat who cam-
paigned in the West knows this. The Democratic campaign in
the West soon consisted almost entirely of an attempt to combat
the Woman's Party attack.

Tribute to the strength of the Woman's Party campaign
is contained in the remark of a woman who had in charge
the campaign of the Democratic women voters. Out of six
leaflets which her organization got out, five were on the sub-
ject of Suffrage. A reporter remonstrated with her in regard
to Suffrage not being an issue in the West. She agreed with
him, but, she added, "We have to combat the Woman's
Party."

The whole Western campaign of the Republicans was
conducted as if they were assured of victory. In many cases
the organizers of the Woman's Party told the Republicans
in the East that they were going to lose in certain districts.
" Nensense," laughed the Republicans, " we are sure to win
there, absolutely sure." Alice Paul in Chicago received
reports from campaigners through the West and all pre-
dicted Democratic victory. She went to Republican Head-
quarters with these reports, but she could not convince the
Republicans of the truth of them.

Senator Curtis, Secretary of the Republican Senatorial
Committee, said he got more information as to the situation

180 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

in the West from the Woman's Party than he got from any
other source.

It became apparent soon that Wilson was going to win.
It was then that advisors came to Alice Paul and said,
" Withdraw your speakers from the campaign, so that you
will not have the humiliation of defeat before the country."

And it was then that Alice Paul answered, " No. If me
withdraw our speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the
issue from the campaign. We must make this such an im-
portant thing in national elections that the Democrats will
not want to meet it again."

Commenting on this campaign, Alice Paul said the Demo-
crats made a strong appeal to the women voters but for the
Republicans the women did not exist, and in fact the chief
recognition that the Republicans made of the women in the
West was to send there the Hughes so-called " Golden Spe-
cial," which, on leaving Chicago, announced that it was not
a "Suffrage Special."

< After the campaign was over, Vance McCormick, Chair-
man of the Democratic Party, was talking with a member of
his committee. He said, in effect : " Before the election of
1918, we must patch up our weak places. Our weakest spot
is the Suffrage situation. We must get rid of the Suffrage
Amendment before 1918 if we want to control the next
Congress."

The Sixty-fourth Congress met for its second and last
session on December 4, 1916. President Wilson delivered a
message which made no reference to the subject of Woman
Suffrage. The Congressional Union, always having advance
information, knew this beforehand. And so on that occa-
sion, by a bit of direct action, they brought Suffrage vividly
to the attention of President Wilson, Congress, and the
whole country. This was the only action of the Woman's
Party which Alice Paul did not give out beforehand to the
press.

Early that morning, before the outer doors were opened,

SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 181

five women of the Congressional Union appeared before the
Capitol. After a long wait the doors were opened, and —
the first of a big crowd — they placed themselves in the front
row of the gallery just to the left of the big clock. They
faced the Speaker's desk, from which the President would
read his message. These five women were: Mrs. John
Rogers, Jr.; Mrs. Harry Lowenburg; Dr. Caroline Spencer;
Florence Bayard Hilles ; Mabel Vernon. In a casual manner,
other members of the Union seated themselves behind them
and on the gallery steps beside them: Lucy Burns; Eliza-
beth Papandre; Mildred Gilbert; Mrs. W^iUiam L. Colt;
Mrs. Townsend Scott.

Mabel Vernon sat in the middle of the five women in the
front row. Pinned to her skirt, under the enveloping cape
which she wore, was a big banner of yellow sateen. After
the five women had settled themselves, Mabel Vernon un-
pinned the banner and dropped it, all ready for unrolling,
on the floor. At the top of the banner were five long tapes
— too long — 'Mabel Vernon now regretfully declares. At the
psychological moment, which had been picked beforehand, in
President Wilson's speech — ^he was recommending a greater
freedom for the Porto Rican men — Mabel Vernon whispered
the series of signals which had previously been decided on.
Immediately — ^working like a beautifully co-ordinated ma-
chine— the five women stooped, lifted the banner, and,
holding it tightly by the tapes, dropped it over the balcony
edge. It unrolled with a smart snap and displayed these
words :

MB. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOB
WOMAN SUFrBAGE.?

Then the women sat perfectly still, in the words of the
Washington Post " five demure and unruflBed women . . .
with the cords supporting the fluttering thing clenched in
their hands."

The effect was instantaneous. The President looked up,
hesitated a moment, then went on reading. AH the Con-

182 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

gressmen turned; The Speaker sat motionless. A buzz ran
wildly across the floor. Policemen and guards headed up-
stairs to the gallery where the women were seated ; but their
progress was inevitably slow as the steps were tightly
packed with members of the Congressional Union. In the
meantime, one of the pages, leaping upward, caught the
banner and tore it away from the cords in the women's
hands. " It it hadn't been for those long tapes," Mabel
Vernon says, " they never could have got it until the Presi-
dent finished his speech."

The episode took up less than five minutes' time. Until
the President finished his message, it seemed to be completely
forgotten. But the instant the President with his escort
disappeared through the door, every Congressman was on his
feet staring up at the gallery. \

The Woman's Party publicity accounts of this episode —
multigraphed the night before^were in the hands of the
men in the Press Gallery the instant after it happened. This
is a sample of the perfect organization and execution of the
Woman's Party plans.

Of course, this incident was a front page story in every
newspaper in the United States that night despoiling the
President of his headlines. It is now one of the legends in
Washington that in the midst of the dinner given to the
President by the Gridiron Club shortly after, the identical
banner was unfurled before his eyes.

The following week, at the first meeting of the Judiciary
Committee since the Presidential Campaign, the report of the
Federal Suffrage Amendment was made without recommenda-
tion to the House of Representatives.

vin

HAIL AND FAREWELL

TO INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAIN

" For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime ;
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer."

— Milton.

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic.

How can death claim you?

Many he leads down the long halls of silence

Burdened with years.

Those who have known sorrow

And are weary with forgetting.

The young who have tasted only gladness

And who go with wistful eyes.

Never to see the sharp breaking of illusion.

For these —

We who remain and are lonely

Find consolation, saying

" They have won the white vistas of quietness."

But for you —

The words of my grief will not form

In a pattern of resignation.

The syllables of rebellion

Are quivering upon my lips !

You belonged to life —

To the struggling actuality of earth ;

You were our Hortensia and flung

Her challenge to the world —

Our world still strangely Roman —

" Does justice scorn a woman? "

Oh ! Between her words and yours the centuries seem
Like little pauses in an ancient song.
For in the hour of war's discordant triumph
You both demanded " Peace " !
. 183

184 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

And I, remembering how the faces of many women ,
Turned toward you with passionate expectation.
How can I find consolation?

Inez^ vibrant, courageous, symbolic.

Can death still claim you?

When in the whitening winter of our grief

Your smile witL all the radiance of spring.

When from the long halls of silence

The memory of your voice comes joyously back

To the ears of our desolation —

Your voice that held a challenge and a caress.

You have gone —

Yet you are ours eternally !

Your gallant youth.

Your glorious self-sacrifice — ^all ours !

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic.

Death cannot claim you !

Ruth Fitch.
The Suffragist. December 30, 1916.

The most poignant event — and perhaps the most beautiful
in all the history of the Congressional Union — took place
on Christmas Day of this year, the memorial service in
memory of Inez MilhoUand.

Inez MilhoUand was one of the human sacrifices offered on
the altar of woman's liberty. She died that other women
might be free.

In the recent campaign, she had spoken in Wyoming,
Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and
California. In her memorial address, Maud Younger said:

The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night,
she would take a train at two in the morning, to arrive at eight;
and then a train at midnight, to arrive at five in the morning.
She would come away from audiences and droop as a flower.
The hours between were hours of exhaustion and suffering.
She would ride in the trains gazing from the windows, listless,
''almost lifeless, until one spoke; then again the sweet smile, the
sudden interest, the quick sympathy. The courage of her was
marvelous.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing

Inez Milholland.
In the Washington Parade, March 3, 1913.

HAIL AND FAREWELL 186

At a great mass-meeting at Los Angeles, in October, she
was saying — in answer to the President's words, " The tide
is rising to meet the moon ; you will not have long to wait,"
— " How long must women wait for liberty? " On the word
liberty, she fell fainting to the floor. Within a month, she
was dead.

That Christmas Day, Statuary Hall in the Capitol of the
United States was transformed. The air was full of the
smells of the forest. Greens made a background — partially
concealing the semi-circle of statues — at the rear; laurel and
cedar banked the dais in front; somber velvet curtains fell
about its sides. Every one of the chairs which filled the
big central space supported a flag of purple, white, and gold.
Between the pillars of the balcony hung a continuous frieze ;
pennants of purple, white, and gold — the tri-color of these
feminist crusaders.

The audience assembled in the solemn quiet proper to such
an occasion, noiselessly took their seats in the semi-circle
below and the gallery above. The organ played Ave Maria.
Then again, a solemn silence fell. j

Suddenly the stillness was invaded by a sound — music,
very faint and faraway. It grew louder and louder. It was
the sound of singing. It came nearer and nearer. It was
the voices of boys'. Presently the beginning of a long line
of boy choristers, who had wound through the marble hall-
way, appeared in the doorway. They marched into the hall ,
chanting:

" Forward, out of error.
Leave behind the night.
Forward through the darkness.
Forward into light."

Behind came Mary Morgan in white, carrying a golden
banner with the above words inscribed on it. This was a
duplicate of the banner that Inez Milholland bore in the
first Suffrage parade in New York. Behind the golden ban-
ner came a great procession of young women wearing

186 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

(

straight surplices ; the first division in purple, the next in
white, the last in gold, carrying high standards which bore
the tri-color. Before each division came another young girl
in white, carrying a golden banner — ^lettered.
One banner said:

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS THAT HE
LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR A FRIEND

Another banner said:

WITHOUT EXTINCTION IS LIBERTY, WITHOUT
RETROGRADE IS EQUALITY

The last banner said:

AS HE DIED TO MAKE MEN HOLY LET US DIE
TO MAKE MEN FREE

These white-clad girls stood in groups on both sides of the
laurel-covered dais against the shadowy background of the
curtains. The standard-bearers in the purple, the white, the
gold, formed a semi-circle of brilliant color which lined the
hall and merged with the purple, white, and gold frieze above
them. They stood during the service, their tri-colored ban-
ners at rest.

There followed music. The choristers sang : Forward Be
Our Watchword. The Mendelssohn Quartet sang: Love
Divine and Thou Whose Almighty Word. Elizabeth Howry
sang first All Through the Night and, immediately after,
Henchel's ringing triumphant Morning Song. It is an
acoustic eifect of Statuary Hall that the music seems to
come from above. That effect added immeasurably to the
solemnity of this occasion.

Tribute speeches followed, Anne Martin introducing the
speakers. Mrs. William Kent read two resolutions : one pre-
pared under the direction of Zona Gale, the other by
Florence Brewer Boeckel. Maud Younger delivered a beau-
tiful memorial address.

HAIL AND FAREWELL 187

" And so ever through the West, she went," Miss Younger said
in part, " through the West that drew her, the West that loved
her, until she came to the end of the West. There where the sun
goes down in glory in the vast Pacific, her life went out in glory
in the shining cause of freedom. . . . They will tell of her in
the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as she flashed through
her last burning mission, flashed through to her death, a falling
stdr in the western heavens. . . . With new devotion we go
forth, inispired by her sacrifice to the end that this sacrifice be
not in vain, but that dying she shall bring to pass that which
living she could not achieve, full freedom for women, full democ-
racy for the nation. ..."

At the end the quartet sang, Before the Heavens Were
Spread Abroad. Then the procession re-formed, and
marched out again as it had come, a slow-moving band of
color which gradually disappeared; a river of music which
gradually died to a thread, to a sigh . ... to nothing.
. . .As before the white-surpliced choristers headed the
procession, chanting the recessional, For All the Saints.
Their banners lowered, the girl standard-bearers — first those
in floating gold, then those in drifting white, then those in
heavy purple — followed. From the far-away reaches of the
winding marble halls sounded the boyish voices. Faintly
came:

O, may Thy Soldiers, faithful, true and bold.
Fight as the Saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia !

And fainter still:

But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day.
The Saints triumphant rise in bright array.

The voices lost themselves in the distance, merged with
silence. The audience still sat moveless, spellbound by all
this beauty and grief. Suddenly the Marseillaise burst
from the organ like a call to the new battle. Instantly, it
was echoed by the strings.

188 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

On January 9, the President received a deputation of
three hundred women. This deputation brought to him the
resolutions passed at memorials held in commemoration of
Inez Milholland from California to New York.

Sara Bard, Field said in part: .

Since that day (a year ago) when we came to you, Mr. Presi-
dent, one of our most beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Mil-
holland, has paid the price of her life for a cause. The un-
timely death of a young woman like this — a woman for whom
the world has such bitter need — ^has focussed the attention of
men and women of this nation on the fearful waste of women
which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal
instinct for the preservation of life — whether it be the physical
life of a child, or the spiritual life of a cause — is sending women
into this battle for liberty with an urge that gives them no rest
night or day. Every advance of liberty has demanded' its quota
of human sacrifice, and, if I had time,^ I could show you that we
have paid in a measure that is running over. In the light of
Inez MilhoUand's death, as we look over the long backward trail
through which we have sought pur political liberty, we are asking,
how long, how long, must this struggle go on?

Mr. President, to the nation more than to women themselves is
this waste of maternal force significant. In industry, such a
waste of money and strength would not be permitted. The
modern trend is all towards efficiency. Why is such waste per-
mitted in the making of a nation ?

Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in
respect to his contacts with people, as well as in the grave
business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a
great dignitary holds him away from the democracy of com-
munion necessary to full understanding of what the people are
really thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation today
fails in its mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the
formality of such an occasion, we fail to bring to you the throb
of woman's desire for freedom and her eagerness to ally herself
with all those activities to which you yourself have dedicated
your life. When once the ballot is in her hand, those tasks which
this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man's.
We women who are here today are close to this desire of woman.
We cannot believe that you are our enemy, or are indifferent to
the fundamental righteousness of our demand.

We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper.

V<lTHOUT DCTINCTION
IS LIBERTY,
V»IT«OUTRETRO»ADE
ISEQuilTY.

Joy Young at the Inez Milholland Memorial
Service.

HAIL AND FAREWELL 189

We have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy,
in the name of all women who have fought and died for this
cause, and in a peculiar way, with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in
the name of this gallant girl who died with the word " Liberty "
on her lips. We have come asking you this day to speak some
favorable word to us, that we may know that you will use your
good and great office to end this wasteful struggle of women.

The President replied:

Ladies, I had not been apprised that yota were coming here to
make any representation that would issue an appeal to me. I
had been told that you were coming to present memorial resolu-
tions with regard to the very remarkable woman whom your
cause has lost. I therefore am not prepared to say anything
further than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.

I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my
own personal purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what
circumscriptions I am bound as leader of a Party. As the leader
of a Party, my commands come from that Party, and not from
private personal convictions.

My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from iio
source, but my own conviction, and there my position has been
so frequently defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so
impossible for me until the orders of my Party are changed, to
do anything other than I am doing as a Party leader that I
think nothing more is necessary to be said.

I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to
observe from the utterance of the last campaign that the Demo-
cratic Party is more inclined than the opposition Party to assist
in this great cause, and it has been a matter of surprise to me,
and a matter of very great regret, that so many of those who
are heart and soul for this cause seem so greatly to misunder-
stand and misinterpret the attitudes of Parties. In this country,
as in every other self-governing country, it is really through the
instrumentality of Parties that things can be accomplished. They
are not accomplished by the individual voice, but by concen-
trated action, and that action must come only so fast as you can
concert it. I have done my best, and shall continue to do my
best to concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally
believe.

In Maud Younger's delightful Revelations of a Woman
Lobbyist, in McCall's Magazine, she thus describes that
scene :

190 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

The doors opened, and, surrounded by Secret Service men,
President Wilson entered. He came quickly forward, smiling as
he shook my hand. Contrary to the general impression. President
Wilson has a very human, sympathetic personality. He i^ not the
aloof, academic type one expects of a man who, avoiding people,
gets much of his knowledge from books and reports. Though
he appears to the general public as in a mist on a mountain top,
like the gods of old, he is really a man of decided emotional
reactions.

I answered his greeting briefly, giving him the resolutions I
held, and presented Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who handed
him the New York memorial without speaking at all. We were
saving time for his declaration. Then came Sara — small, delicate
Sara Bard Field, a woman of rare spirituality and humor —
whom we had chosen to speak for us.

She began to talk very nobly and beautifully, while the Presi-
dent listened cordially. But suddenly a cold wave passed over
him. Sara bad quoted Mr. Hughes. At that name, the Presi-
dent's manner chilled. The look in his eyes became so cold
, that, as Sara says, the words almost froze on her lips. She
finished in an icy stillness, and after a moment the President
spoke.

Instead of the assurances we had expected, we heard words
to the effect that he could not dictate to his Party. We must
first concert public opinion. It was his last gleam, for, looking
about him and seeing amazement, disappointment, indignation, he
grew still colder. With a last defiant glance at us all he abruptly
left the room. Secret Service men, newspaper men, and secre-
taries followed him. Where the President of the United States
had been was now a clod^ door.

Stunned, talking in low, indignant tones, we moved slowly out
of the East Room and returned to our Headquarters. There we
discussed the situation. We saw- that the President would do
nothing for some time, perhaps not until the eve of the Presiden-
tial election in 1920. He said we must concert public opinion.
But how.** For half a century women had been walking the hard
way of the lobbyist. We had had speeches, meetings, parades,
campaigns, organization. What new method could we devise?

PART THREE
1917

THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

ON tHe picket line

The avenue is misty gray,
And here beside the guarded gate
We hold our golden blowing flags
And wait.

The people pass in friendly wise;
They smile their greetings where we stand
And turn aside to recognize
The just demand.

Often the gates are swung aside:
The man whose power could free us now
Looks from his car to read our plea —
And bow.

Sometimes the little children laugh;
The careless folk toss careless words.
And scoflf and turn away, and yet
The people pass the whole long day
Those golden flags cgainst the gray
And can't forget.

Beulah Amidon.
The Suffragist, March 8, 1917.

1. The Peaceful Picketing

Before we examine the consideration which actuated the
National Woman's Party in waging the picket campaign of
1917, let us see where President Wilson stood at the begin-
ning of the war ; let us briefly recapitulate the steps which

brought him there.

193

194 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

It will be remembered that, shortly after the President
took his seat in March, 1913, he told a deputation from
the Congressional Committee that Suffrage was a question
to which he had given no thought and on which he had no
opinion. During the ^ear, no longer stating that he knew
nothing about Suffrage, he gave as a reason for inaction
that the Congressional program was too crowded to con-
sider it. By the end of the year, he had reached the point
where he stated that he could take no action on the Suffrage
Amendment until commanded by his Party.

In 1914, he continued to state that he was prohibited from
acting because of being bound by his Party until June,
when he seized on the excuse of States Rights further to
explain his inaction. In the autumn of 1915 he first came
out personally for Suffrage by voting for it in New Jersey
but still refused to support it in Congress. His next step
forward came in June, 1916, when he caused the principle
of Suffrage to be recognized in the Party platform, though
as yet neither he nor the Party had endorsed the Federal
Amendment. In September of that same year — after the
Woman's Party had begun its active campaign in the Suf-
frage States — ^the President took another step and addressed
a Suffrage Convention of the National American Woman's
Suffrage Association. But as yet he was not committed to
the Federal Amendment, had not begun to exert pressure
on Congress.

The situation of the President and the Woman's Party at
this juncture may be summed up in this way. Wilson, him-
self, was beginning to realize that the Suffrage Amendment
must ultimately pass. But he had just been re-elected. He
was safe for four years; he could take his time about it.
The Woman's Party on the other hand, realized that the
President being safe for four years, no political pressure
could be exerted upon him. They realized that they must
devise other methods to keep Suffrage, as a measure de-
manding immediate enactment, before him.

In the meantime, a feeling of acute discontent was growing

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 195

in the women of the United States. The older women —
and they were the third generation to demand the vote —
were beginning to ask how long this period of entreaty must
be protracted. The younger women — the fourth generation
to demand the vote — ^were becoming impatient with the out-
worn methods of their predecessors. Moreover, when the
disfranchised women of the East visited the enfranchised
States of the West, their eyes were opened in a practical
way to the extraordinary injustice of their own disfranchise-
ment. Equally, the enfranchised women of the West, mov-
ing to Eastern States, resented their loss of this political
weapon. On many women in America the militant movement
of England had produced a profound, impression.

A new note had crept into the speeches made by the mem-
bers of the Woman's Party — the note of this impatience and
resentment. It will be remembered that Mrs. Kent told the
President that the women voters of the West were accus-
tomed to being listened to with attention by politicians, and
that they resented the effort to make it seem that they were
merely trying to bother a very busy official. Mrs. Blatch
had told him that the time had gone by when she would
stand on street corners i and ask the vote from every Tom,
Dick, and Harry ; that she was determined to appeal instead
to the men who spoke her own language and who had in
charge the affairs of the government.

Doris Stevens, in an interview in the Omaha Daily News
for June 29, 1918, voices perfectly what her generation was
feeling.

A successful young Harvard engineer said to me the other
day, " I don't believe you realize how much men objected to
your picketing the White House. Now I know what I'm talking
about. I've talked with men in all walks of life, and' I tell you
they didn't approve of what you women did."

This last with warmer emphasis and a scowl of the brow, " I
don't suppose you were in a position to know how violently men
felt about it."

I listened patiently and courteously. Should I disillusion
him ? I thought it was the honest thing to do. " Why, of course

196 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

men didn't like it. Do you think we imagined they would?
We knew they would disapprove. When did men ever applaud
women fighting for their own liberty.'' We are approved only
when we fight for yours ! "

" You don't mean to say you planned to do something knowing
men would not approve ? "

I simply had to tell him, " Why, certainly ! We're just be-
ginning to get confidence in ourselves. At last we've learned to
make and stand by our own judgments."

" But going to jail. That was pretty shocking."

" Yes, indeed it was. It not only shocked us that a govern-
ment would be alarmed enough to do such a thing, but what was
more to the point, it shocked the entire country into doing some-
thing quickly about Woman Suffrage."

It will: be seen by the foregoing pages of this book that
Suffragists had exhausted every form of Suffrage agitation
known to the United States. In particular, they had sent
to the President every kind of deputation that could possibly
move him.

They decided to send him a perpetual deputation.

Alice Paul, in explanation of her strategy in this matter,
uses one of the vivid figures that are so typical of her : " If
a creditor stands before a man's house all day long, de-
manding payment of his bill, the man must either remove
the creditor or pay the bill."

At first, the President tried to remove the creditor. Later
he paid the bill.

At ten o'clock on January 10, 1917, the day after the
deputation to the President, twelve women emerged from
Headquarters and marclied across Lafayette Square to the
White House. Four of them bore lettered banners, and
eight of them carried purple, white, and gold banners of the
Woman's Party. They marched slowly — a banner's length
apart. Six of them took up their stand at the East gate,
and six of them at the West gate. At each gate — standing
between pairs of women holding on high purple, white, and
gold colors — two women held lettered banners.

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 197

One read:

MR. PRESIDENT WHAT WILI, YOU DO FOB
WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

The other read:

HOW I,ONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

These were the first women to picket the White House.

The first picket line appeared on January 10, 1917; the
last, over a year and a half later. Between those dates,
except when Congress was not in session, more than a thou-
sand women held lettered banners, accompanied by the pur-
ple, white, and gold tri-colors, at the White House gates,
or in front of the Capitol. They picketed every day of the
week, except Sunday; in all kinds of weather, in rain and
in sleet, in hail, and in snow. All varieties oi women picketed :
all races and religions ; all cliques and classes ; all professions
and parties. Washington became accustomed to the digni-
fied picture — ^the pickets moving with a solemn silence, al-
ways in a line that followed a crack in the pavement ; always
a banner's length apart ; taking their stand with a precision
almost military; maintaining it with a movelessness almost,
statuesque. Washington became accustomed also to the
rainbow splash at the White House gates — "like trumpet
calls," somebody described the banners. Artists often spoke
of the beauty of their massed color. In the daytime, those
banners gilded by the sunlight were doubly brilliant, but at
twilight the effect was transcendent. Everyvifhere the big,
white lights — set in the parks on such low standards that
they seemed strange, luminous blossoms, springing from the
masses of emerald green shrubbery — filled the dusk with
bluish-white splendor, and, made doubly colorful by this
light, the long purple, white, and gold ribbon stood out
against a back-ground beautiful and appropriate; a mosaic
on the gray of the White House pavement ; the pen-and-ink
blackness of the White House iron work; the bare, brown

198 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

crisscross of the White House trees, and the chaste colonial
simplicity of the White House itself.

With her abiding instinct for pageantry and for telling
picturesqueness of demonstration, Alice Paul soon punctu-
ated the monotony of the picketing by special events.
Various States celebrated State days on the picket line.
Maryland was the first of these, and the long line of Mary-
land women bearing great banners, extended along Pennsyl-
vania Avenue the entire distance from the East gate to the
West gate. Pennsylvania Day, New York Day, Virginia
Day, New Jersey Day, followed. The Monday of every
week was set aside finally for District of Columbia Day.

The New York delegation carried on their banners phrases
from President Wilson's book. The New Freedom.

LIBEKTY IS A FUNDAMENTAL DEMAND OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

WE ARE INTERESTED IN THE UNITED STATES, POLITICALLY
SPEAKING, IN NOTHING BUT HUMAN LIBERTY.

On College Day, thirteen colleges were represented, the
biggest group from Goucher College, Baltimore. Then came
Teachers' Day; Patriotic Day, and Lincoln Day. On
Patriotic Day, one of the banners read:

DENMARK ON THE VERGE OF WAR GAVE WOMEN THE VOTE.
WHY NOT GIVE IT TO AMERICAN WOMEN NOW?

On Lincoln Day, they said:

WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?

AFTER THE CIVIL WAR WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM.

THEY WERE TOLD TO WAIT THIS WAS THE NEGRO's HOUR.

IN 1917, AMERICAN WOMEN STILL ASK FOR FREEDOM.

WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT THAT THIS

IS THE PORTO RICAN's HOUR?

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 199

On Sunday, February 18, came Labor Day on the picket
line. It was, of course, impossible for wage-earning women
to picket the White House on any other day. They repre-
sented not only office workers, but factory workers from the
great industrial centers. Many of them had come from
other cities.

Susan B. Anthony's birthday, February 15, was celebrated
impressively, although it rained and snowed heavily. Three
new banners appeared that day. The first — big enough and
golden enough even to suit that big, golden woman — bore
quotations from Susan B. Anthony:

WE PRESS QUE DEMAND FOB, THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN
NO NAEK.OW, CAPTIOITS, OR SELF-SEEKING SPIRIT, BUT FROM
PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITI-
ZEN, FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC, AND AS A GLORIOUS
EXAMPLE TO THE NATIONS OP THE EARTH.

The Second Susan B. Anthony banner said :

AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN OR MONEY,
VALIANT GENERALS OR BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CON-
SISTENT NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLES THAT
ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FKOM THE
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

The third Susan B. Anthony banner said:

THE EIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOE ONE-HALF OF ITS
PEOPLE IS OF FAE MOKE VITAL CONSEttUENCE TO THE NATION
THAN ANY OE ALL OTHEE QUESTIONS.

On March 2, 1917, the Congressional Union and its West-
ern organization, the Woman's Party, met in joint conven-
tion and organized themselves into the National Woman's
Party.

On that occasion, Alice Paul said:

200 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

We feel that by combining the Congressional Union and the
Woman's Party we shall bring about a unity in organization
which will make impossible duplication, difference of opinion,
and divergence of method. By uniting we make, moreover, for
unity of spirit in the whole Suffrage movement, bringing the
voters and non-voters together in a movement in which they should
both be integral parts.

The original purpose for which the Woman's Party, as an
organization confined to women voters alone, was formed, has,
we believe, been served. In the first three years of our work we
endeavored to call the attention of political leaders and Congress
to the fact that women were voting and that these voting women
were interested in Suffrage. But words alone did not have much
effect. We found we had to visualize the existence of voting
women out in the West and their support of the Suffrage Amend-
ment. The Woman's Party was formed as one means of doing
this.

The Woman's Party did, I believe, have an effect on the
political leaders. It was very clear, I think, at the convention in
Chicago and in St. Louis that the idea that women were voting
and that those women were interested in the Federal Amend-
ment was at last appreciated. This November's election com-
pleted our work in getting that fact into the minds of Congress-
men and political leaders. There is no longer any need to draw
a line a,round women voters and set them off by themselves in
order to call attention to them. They now enter into the calcula-
tions of every political observer.

If we amalgamate and make ourselves one great group of
voters and non-voters all working for the Federal Amendment,
the question arises: What name shall we be called by, the Con-
gressional Union or the Woman's Party? Our Executive Com-
mittee felt that we ought to keep the name of the Woman's
Party, because it stands for political power.

The objections brought against this are, I think, two. First,
that non-voters should not, according to custom, be part of a
political Party ; second, that if they are included, that Party will
not command as much respect as would a Party composed solely
of voters. There are non-voters in the Socialist, the Progressive,
and the Prohibition Parties; there is no reason why, if we are
interested in precedent and custom, they should not be in our
Party also. As to the second point: The Congressional Union
has the reputation of being an active, determined, and well-
financed organization. When the political world realizes that
this young Woman's Party has been strengthened by tie influx

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

Wage Earners Picketing the White House, February, 1917.

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 201

of twenty-five thousand workers of the Congressional Union
ready to give their service and money it will consider that the
Woman's Party stands for more power than if formed of the
women of the Western States only.

All of us in the Congressional Union feel an affection for it.
But that is no reason for continuing the organization. The Con-
gressional Union has served a useful purpose, we believe. But
now that we have created the Woman's Party we ought, it seems
to me, to develop and make that the dominant Suffrage factor in
this country because that, through its name and associations,
throws the emphasis more than does the Congressional Union
on the political power of women.

The following officers were elected unanimously at the
morning session : Chairman of the National Woman's Party,
Alice Paul ; Vice-Chairman, Anne Martin ; Secretary, Mabel
Vernon ; Treasurer, Gertrude Crocker. The executive board
elected were: Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs.
J. W. Brannan, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Abby Scott Baker,
Mrs. William Kent, Maud Younger, Doris Stevens, Florence
Bayard Hilles, Mrs. Donald Hooker, Mrs. J. A. H. Hop-
kins, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.

At that Convention, various resolutions were passed; the
most notable in regard to the attitude of the National
Woman's Party towards the rapidly developing war situa-
tion. That resolution runs as follows:

Whereas the problems involved in the present international
situation, affecting the lives of millions of women in this country,
make imperative the enfranchisement of women.

Be it resolved that the National Woman's Party, organized for
the sole purpose of securing political liberty for women, shall
continue to work for this purpose until it is accomplished, being
unalterably convinced that in so doing the organization serves
the highest interests of the country.

And be it further resolved that to this end we urge upon the
President and the Congress of the United States the immediate
passage of the National Suffrage Amendment.

It was decided to present these resolutions to the Presi-
dent. Shortly after, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the

202 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

Port of New York, on behalf of the Woman's Party, in-
formed the President that a deputation would visit him for
that purpose.

This demonstration was not so much a protest at the
failure of the first administration to pass the Anthony
Amendment, or at the adjournment of Congress without pass-
ing it, as a presentation of the demands of the National
Woman's Party immediately upon the opening of President
Wilson's second term.

During the first three days in March, Washington filled
steadily with inauguration crowds. When they got off the
train, the Great Demand banner of the National Woman's
Party confronted them, and girls handed them slips inviting
them to the demonstration of the National Woman's Party
at the White House on Inauguration Day and to the mass-
meeting of the National Woman's Party to be held that
night. Girls als.o stood in theatre lobbies, handing out mor«
of these slips. Girls made the rounds of the government de-
partments, handing out still more. Everywhere great
posters said:

COME TO THE WHITE HOUSE ON MABCH 4.
COME IN THOUSANDS.

Inauguration Day dawned a day of biting wind and slash-
ing rain.

Outside Headquarters was turmoil; inside a boiling ac-
tivity. Hundreds of women were preparing to picket the
White House. To accommodate them, a rubber company,
hastily summoned, had commandeered one room and was
selling rain-coats; tarpaulin hats; rubbers.

An extraordinary, a magnificent demonstration followed.
To the music of several bands, nearly a thousand pickets
circled the White House four times — a distance of four
miles. Vida Milholland, the younger sister of Inez Milhol-
land, marched at the head, carrying on a golden banner her
sister's last words for Suffrage.

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 203

ME. PBESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST 'WOMEN WAIT FOB. JJBERTY?

The Great Demand banner followed, carried by Mrs.
Benton Mackaye:

WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITtTTION OE
THE UNITED STATES ENFBANCHISING WOMEN.

Beulah Amidon carried the Suffrage banner which Inez
Milholland bore in the first Suffrage procession in New
York:

Forward, Out Of Darkness,
Leave Behind The Night.
Forward Out Of Error,
Forward Into Light.

Behind there came hundreds of women bearing the purple,
white, and gold. They were divided according to States ;
and before each division marched the State flag of the divi-
sion. The drenching rain fell steadily. The pavements
turned to shallow lakes, and the banners — ^their brilliancy
accentuated by the wet — ^threw long, wavy reflections on the
glassy, gray streets. They were of course expecting this
demonstration at the White House, and, as though it were
dangerous, unusual precautions had been taken against it.
Every gate was locked. The Washington force of police
officers, augmented by police from Baltimore and by .squads
of plain-clothes men, guarded the grounds without and
within. Gilson Gardner said the President seemed to think
the women were going to steal his grass roots.

There was no one at the locked gates to receive the women
or the resolutions except the guards ; these guards protested
that they had not been ordered to receive either. The women
visited every gate, but received the same answer. The cards
of the leaders were finally handed over to a guard to present
at the White House. He tried to deliver them, but was
reprimanded for leaving his post, and sent back. Learning

204 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

that the cards would be delivered at the end of the day, as
is the custom with visiting-cards of casual visitors at the
White House, the thousand pickets took up their march
again.

Gilson Gardner wrote of this demonstration :

The weather gave this affair its character. Had there been
fifteen hundred women carrying banners on a fair day, the sight
would have been a pretty one. But to see a thousand women —
young women, middle-aged and old women — and there were
women in the line who had passed their three score and ten —
marching in a rain that almost froze as it fell ; to see them
standing and marching and holding their heavy banners, mo-
mentarily growing heavier — holding them against a wind that
was half gale — hour after hour, until their gloves were wet, their
clothes soaked through; to see them later with hands sticky
from the varnish from the banner poles — bare hands, for the
gloves had by this time been pulled off, and the hands were blue
with cold — ^to see these women keep their lines and go through
their program fully, losing only those who fainted or fell from
exhaustion, was a sight to impress even the dulled and jaded
senses of one who has seen much.

One young woman from North Dakota I saw clinging to the
iron pickets around the White House, her banner temporarily
abandoned, fighting against what was to her a new feeling,
faintness resulting from the pain in her hands. She was
brought to the automobile in which I was riding before she
actually fell to the ground; but after a short rest she was back
in the line, and finished with the others.

There is no doubt that what Gilson Gardner said was
true — the weather gave this affair its character.

People passing by, thrilled by the gallantry of the
marchers, joined the procession. And as Gilson Gardner
says, it was not because it was a pretty sight, or because
these women were all young. Anna Norris Kendall of Wis-
consin, seventy-two years old, and the Rev. Olympia Brown,
eighty-two years old, one of the pioneer Suffragists of the
country, both took part.

That day, a newly elected Congressman drove about
Washington, showing the city to his wife. He had always

The Thousand Pickets Try Vainly to Deliver Their Reso-
lutions TO THE President, March 4, 1917.

A Thousand Pickets Marching Around the White House,
March 4, 1917.

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 20S

been a Suffragist. She had always been an anti-Suffragist.
The sudden sight of the thousand women marching in the
rain not only converted her, but it produced such an effect
on her she burst into tears.

Later, President Wilson sent a letter to the National
Woman's Party, acknowledging the resolutions presented
to him by the deputations of March 4, and concluded : " May
I not once more express my sincere interest in the cause of
Woman Suffrage?"

Congress adjourned on March 3, 1917. The pickets ad-
journed with it. On April 2, a Special War Session of Con-
gress convened. The Suffragist gives an interesting descrip-
tion of that interesting day.

Just half an hour before Congress formally opened, the
Suffrage sentinels at the Capitol took their places! . . . There
was tensity in the atmosphere. The Capitol grounds were over-
run with pacifists from many cities wearing white-lettered
badges.; and with war advocates, as plainly labeled, with
partisan demands. They swarmed over the Capitol grounds
unmolested, though extra precautions were taken throughout the
day and in the evening when troops of cavalry were called out.
The silent sentinels stood unmoved the while for democracy
while peace and war agitation eddied around them.

The pickets convened with Congress. They continued to
stand at the gates of the White House, but they extended
their line to the Capitol. Three pickets, led by Elsie Hill,
took up their station by the House entrance and three by
the Senate entrance. At night — this evoked from the news-
papers sly allusions to the Trojan horse — ^they used to store
their banners in the House Office Building.

On April 7, the United States declared itself to be at war
with Germany.

After war was declared, the Woman's Party continued —
and continued with an increasing force and eloquence — to

206 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

demand the enfranchisement of the women of the United
States by Constitutional Amendment. This brought down
upon their heads a storm of criticism ; antagonism ; hostility.
But Alice Paul was not deflected by it from her purpose.
She recalled that, at the outbreak of the Civil War, Suffra-
gists of that day, were entreated to relinquish their Suffrage
work in favor of war work. They were promised that, at
the end of the war, they would be enfranchised. Susan B.
Anthony complied with great reluctance, carried on, against
her will, by the majority of those who surrounded her.

At the end of the war, the black man was enfranchised.
The white women had been asking for the vote ever since.

Every effort was made to shake this young leader in her
fearless stand. All kinds of people came to her and begged
her to give up the picketing. One strong friend, a news-
paper man, said, " It's as though you opened the windows
and said, ' There's a nice big cyclone coming. Come out of
your cyclone-cellars, girls, and let's go in it ! ' " Denuncia-
tions, violence, mobs, murders were predicted.

There was no officer of the National Woman's Party who
did not realize what it meant to go on with such a fight at
such a time.

They determined, whatever befell, not to lower their ban-
ners ; to hold them high.

Alice Paul announced in the editorial columns of the Suf-
fragist, that members of the Woman's Party would, if they
so desired, work for war through various organizations, espe-
cially organized for war work, but that the Woman's Party
itself would continue to work only for the enfranchisement
of women.

The eyes of the world were now turned on the White
House. Distinguished men from all over the country visited
the President, Foreign missions came one after another.

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 207

Picturesque events continued to happen on the picket line.
Arthur Balfour, the leader of the British Mission, called at
the White House to pay his respects. He was confronted
with forty pickets. TJ"heir banners were inscribed with the
President's own words:

WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WHICH WE HAVE jMiWAYS

HELD NEAREST OtTE HEAETS FOE DEMOCEACY, FOE THBI

EIGHT OF THOSE WHO SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY TO HAVE A VOICE

IN THEiE OWN GOVERNMENTS. — President Wilson's War Mes-
sage, April 2, 191T.

This quotation from the President's worids became a
slogan among the Suffragists.

The pickets recalled that when Arthur Balfour used to
emerge into Downing Street, where the English militants
were producing a demonstration, he always wore a bunch of
violets in his buttonhole, to show his sympathy with them.

The spring brought its usual beautiful metamorphosis to
Washington. If the pickets had seemed bejautiful in the
winter, they were quadruply so when the fresh green came.
Everywhere that luxuriance of foliage, exquisitely tender and
soft, which marks Washington, made an intensive background
for their great golden banners and their tri-color. The
pickets found it a delightfully humorous coincidence that,
when they came to take up their station at the White House,
the White House lawns were ablaze with their tri-color — the
white of hyacinths, the purple of azalea, and the gold of
fprsythea. The Little White House itself was not exempt
from this burst of bloom. The huge wistaria vine on its
ia.qa.de turned to a purple cascade; and out of it spirted
the purple, white, and gold of their tri-color and the red,
white, and blue of the national banner. When the French
Commission, including Joffre and Viviani, passed all this
massed color, they leaped to their feet, waving their hats
and shouting their approval.

208 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

On June 20, the Mission headed by Bakmetief, sent by
the new Russian Republic which had just enfranchised its
women, was officially received by President Wilson. When
they reached the White House gates, they were confronted
by a big banner — since known as the " Russian " banner —
borne by Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.

PEESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY UOOT AUE DECEIVING UUSSIA.
THEY SAY " WE AKE A DEMOCRACY. HELP US WIN THE
WAE SO THAT DEMOCKACIES MAY SUEVIVE."

WE WOMEN OP AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMERICA IS NOT A
DEMOCRACY. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED THE
RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESIDENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT
OP THEIR NATIONAL ENPRANCHISMENT.

HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR
GOVERNMENT THAT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE,
IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY.

The appearance of this banner produced strange results.
A man standing at the White House gates leaped at it — ^the
instant the Russian Mission had vanished — and tore the sign
from its supports.

The crowd closed in around them. The two women con-
tinued to stand facing them. Nina Allender, who saw this
from across the street, said that the surging back and forth
of straw hats as the crowd closed in upon the women gave
her a sense of faintness. " One instant the banners were
there, the next there were only bare sticks."

Later, a prominent member of the Mission said to a no less
prominent American, " You know, it was very embarrassing
for us, because we were in sympathy with those women at
the gates."

The next day, June 21, Lucy Bums and Katherine Morey
carried a banner which was the duplicate of the one borne
the day before to the lower White House gate. Before
they could set it up some boys destroyed it. The police did

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 209

not interfere; they looked placidly on. Immediately other
banners were sent off from Headquarters. Hazel Hunkins
carried one which said harmlessly :

DEMOCSACT SHOTTLD BEGIN AT ROME.

The crowds gathered and surged up and down the street
but the two pickets stood motionless. Nothing happened for
a while. Then a man, who stopped to congratulate Miss
Hunkins, was applauded by the crowd. It is an interesting
example of mob psychology that after this applause such
an incident as happened five minutes later could happen. A
woman of the War Department, who had been boasting that
morning in her office that she was going to do this, attacked
Hazel Hunkins. She tore the banners and spat on them.
The avenue was crowded with government clerks and they
immediately fell on the banners and destroyed them after
a struggle. Katherine Morey, who was lunching at Head-
quarters, says in almost Bunyanesque language : " And I
heard a great roar." She ran towards the White House
gates and saw that the mobs had charged the pickets, had
torn the banners into shreds. The mob then rushed to the
other gate, picketed by Catherine Lowry and Lillian Crans.
After a struggle, their banners also were destroyed. Lillian
Crans ran to Headquarters for another banner, carrying
the news of what had happened. ,

Immediately, there emerged from the Little White House
four women led by Mabel Vernon, carrying purple, white,
and gold banners. It was a moment of tension, and the
pickets were white-faced with that tension. This silent, per-
sistent courage had, however, its inevitable effect on the
crowd. It fell back. Before it could recover from its in-
terval of indecision, the police met the groups of girls, and
conducted them to their places. Police reserves ultimately
appeared, and cleared the crowd from Pennsylvania Avenue.
The pickets kept guard the rest of the day in peace. One
of them even did her war-time knitting.

About this time a prominent newspaper man was sent to

210 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

Alice Paul by the powers that be, on a mission of interven-
tion. He told her it was feared the President might be
assassinated by some one in the crowds that the pickets
collected.

" Is the Administration willing to have us make this pub-
lic.'"' Alice Paul asked.

" Oh, no ! " was the answer.

Alice Paul replied, " The picketing will go on as usual."

So now Major Pullman, Chief of Police for the District
of Columbia, called at Headquarters. He told Alice Paul
that if the pickets went out again they would be arrested.
Alice Paul answered in effect:

" Why has picketing suddenly become illegal? Our
lawyers have assured us all along that picketing was legal.
Certainly it is as legal in June as in January." She con-
cluded, " The picketing will go on as usual."

Major Pullman then tpld her again that the pickets would
be arrested if they went out.

Alice Paul replied, " The picketing will go on as usual."

The next morning, June 22, Mis^ Paul telephoned Major
Pullman that the pickets were goipg out with the banners.
Rows of policemen stood outside ,. Headquarters. However,
that did not daunt the pickets. ' Suffragists began to come
out; return; emerge again. AU this made so much coming
and going that, when Mabel Vernon appeared, carrying a
box under her arm, nobody paid any attention. That box,
however, contained a banner. Miss Vernon crossed to the
park and sat down. Presently Lucy Burns came out of
Headquarters and walked leisurely in one direction; a little
later Katherine Morey came out, and strolled in another
direction. At a given moment these two women met at the
East gate of the White House. Mabel Vernon joined them
with the banner. They set it up and stood undisturbed in
front of the White House for several minutes. Suddenly one
of the policemen caught sight of them : " The little devils ! "
he exclaimed: "Can you beat that!"

THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 211

The banner carried the President's own words : " We shall
fight for the things, etc."

The day before the police had been in a bad quandary.
Now they were in a worse one: it did not seem reasonable
to arrest suqh a banner. One policeman did, however, start
to do so. " My God, man, you can't arrest that," another
policeman remonstrated. " Them's the President's own
words." They did make the arrest, though — after seven
minutes of indecision. When the prisoners arrived at the
police station Lucy Burns asked what the charge was:
" Charge ! Charge ! " the policeman said, obviously much
puzzled : " We don't know what the charge is yet. We'll
telephone you that later."

These two, Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey, were the
first of the long list of women to be arrested for picketing
the White House. They were, however, never brought to
trial.

2. The Peaceful Reception

THE YOUNG ARE AT THE GATES

If any one says to me: "Why the picketing for Suffrage? " I
should say in reply, "Why the fearless spirit of youth? Why
does it exist and make itself manifest? "

Is it not really that our whole social world would be likely
to harden and toughen into a dreary mass of conventional nega-
tions and forbiddances — into hopeless layers of conformity and
caste, did not the irrepressible energy and animation of youth,
when joined to the clear-eyed sham-hating intelligence of the
young, break up the dull masses and set a new pace for laggards
to follow?

What is the potent spirit of youth? Is it not the spirit of
revolt, of rebellion against senseless and useless and deadening
things? Most of all, against injustice, which is of all stupid
things the stupidest?

Such thoughts come to one in looking over the field of the
Suffrage campaign and watching the pickets at the White House
and at the Capitol, where sit the men who complacently enjoy the
rights they deny to the women at their gates. Surely, nothing
but the creeping paralysis of mental old age can account for the
phenomenon of American men, law-makers, officials, adminis-
trators, and guardians of the peace, who can see nothing in the
intrepid young pickets with their banners, asking for bare jus-
tice but common obstructors of traffic, naggers — nuisances that
are to be abolished by passing stupid laws forbidding and
repressing to add to the old junk-heap of laws which forbid and
repress? Can it be possible that any brain cells not totally
crystallized could imagine that giving a stone instead of bread
would answer conclusively the demand of the women who, be-
cause they are young, fearless, eager, and rebellious, are fighting
and winning a cause for all women — even for those who are timid,
conventional, and inert?

A fatal error — a losing fight. The old stiff minds must give
way. The old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries
must move on. The young are at the gates !

Lavinia Dock.
The Suffragist, June 80, 1917.
212

THE PEACEFUL RECEPTION 213

This hostility in June had worked up suddenly after the
five quiet months, during which the Woman's Party had been
peacefully picketing the White House. Perhaps their im-
munity was at first due to the fact that when the picketing
in January began, the people in Washington did not expect
it to last. " When the rain comes, they will go," Washing-
tonians said, and then, as the line still continued to appear,
" When the snow comes, they will go." But, instead of
going with the rain, the pickets waited for Smith, the
janitor, to bring them slickers and sou'westers. And instead
of leaving with the snow, they only put on heavier coats.
The pickets became an institution.

It is true, too, that, though that picket line was a surprise
to every one (and to many a shock) to some it was a joke.

There was one Congressman, for instance, who took it
humorously. He said to Nina AUender, when the Suffragists
began to picket the Special War Session of Congress :

" The other day, a man covered the gravestones in a cemetery
with posters which read : ' Rise up ! Your country needs you ! '
Now that was poor publicity. I consider yours equally poor."

" But," replied Mrs. AUender, " we are not picketing a grave-
yard. We are picketing Congress. We believe there are a few
live ones left there."

The Congressman admitted that he had laid himself wide
open to this.

But, from the very beginning, there were those who did
not consider it a joke. The first day the pickets appeared,
a gentleman — old and white-haired — stopped to stare at the
band of floating color. He read the words :

ME. FKESrOENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOE LIBERTY.?

Then he took off his hat, and held it off, bowing his white
head to each of the six silent sentinels. Having passed them,
he covered his head again. But he repeated this reverential
formality as he passed the six women at the other gate.

One Washingtonian took his children out to see the picket

214 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

line. He told them he wanted them to witness history in the
making.

That first day when the President came out for his daily
afternoon drive, he seemed utterly unaware of the pickets;
but the next day he laughed with frank good nature as he
passed, and thereafter he too bared his head as he drove
between them.

It was the intention at first for these sentinels to keep
complete silence. But, as the throngs hurrying past began
to question them, continued to question them, conversation
became inevitable.

The commonest question, of course, was, " Why are you
doing this ? "

The pickets always answered, " The President asked us to
concert public opinion before we could expect anything of
him. We are concerting it upon him." The second most
popular question was, " Why don't you go to Congress ? "
The answer, " We have — again and again and again ; and
they tell us if the President wants it, it will go through."

That hurrying crowd was made up of many types. In the
early morning and the late afternoon, government clerks
predominated. Almost as many were the sight-seers from
every part of the country. Then there were diplomats,
newspaper-men, schoolboys, and schoolgirls, and the matinee
crowds. In the streets came the endless file of motor-cars,
filled mainly with women going ^o teas. Many people pre-
tended not to see the sentinels. They would walk straight
ahead with an impassive expression, casting furtive, side-
long glances at the banners. Again and again, the pickets
enjoyed the wicked satisfaction of seeing them walk straight
into the wire wickets which enclosed the Pennsylvania Avenue
trees. At first, Congressmen tried not to see what was going
on. After a while, however, they too stopped to chat with
the pickets. One Congressman told Mrs. Gilson Gardner
that he felt there was " something religious about that ban-
nered picket line ; that it had already become to him a part
of the modem religion of this country."

THE PEACEFUL RECEPTION 215

Another Congressman, who had been opposed at first to
the picketing, called out one day, " That's right. Keep it
up ! Don't let us forget you for a moment ! "

All kinds of pretty incidents occurred. Once, Ex-Senator
Henry W. Blair visited the picket line. He had been a friend
of Susan B. Anthony, and he made the first speech ever de-
livered in the Senate in favor of Suffrage. White-haired,
keen-eyed, walking with a crutch and a stick, he came along
the line of pickets, greeting each one of them in turn-
ninety years old.

" And I, too, have been a picket," said Greneral Sherwood
to them.

" I salute you as soldiers in a great revolution," said one
chance passer-by to the Women Workers' Delegation on
Labor Day. And — struck apparently by the high spiritual
quality in the beautiful procession — a woman, a stranger to
them, remarked to the pickets : " I wonder if you realize what
a mediaeval spectacle you young women present. You have
made us realize that this cause is a crusade."

Workmen digging trenches in the streets discussed the
matter among themselves. Picketing is an institution very
dear to the heart of Labor. These men showed their sym-
pathy by devising and making supports for the banners.
They offered to make benches for the pickets, but agreed
with the women when they said that sentinels must stand,
not sit, at their posts.

When the Confederate Reunion occurred in Washington,
many of the feeble, white-haired men in their worn Confed-
erate grey and their faded Confederate badges, stopped to
talk with the pickets. I quote the Suffragist:

"We-all came out early to see the sights," said one. "We
went three times around this place, and I thought the big house
in the center was the White House. But we weren't sure — ^not
until you girls came out with your flags and stood here. ' This
is sure enough where the President lives,' I said, ' here are the
Suffrage pickets and there are the purple and gold flags we
read about down home.' You are brave girls."

216 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

One old soldier, hat off, said, " I have picketed in my time.
And now it is your turn, you young folks. You have the courage.
You are going to put it through."

That was the note many of them sounded. "Girls, you are
right," a third encouraged them. " I have been through wars,
and I know. You-all got to have some rights."

Even the anti-Suffragists were moved sometimes. One of them
said: " I have never been impressed by Suffragists before, but
the sincerity you express in being willing to stand here in all
weathers for the thing you believe in makes me think that there is
something in the Suffrage fight after all."

And yet, Suffragists themselves were occasionallj antag-
onistic. " You have put the Suffrage cause back fifty
years ! " said one. She little suspected that, within a year,
the House of Representatives would have passed the Amend-
ment; within less than two years thereafter the Senate.

People went further than words. Many paused to shake
hands. Many asked to be allowed to hold the banners for
a moment.

Once a bride and groom — very young — stopped. The
groom talked to one picket, the bride to another. The man
said : " I think this is outrageous. I have no sympathy with

you whatever. I wouldn't any more let my wife " At

that moment the little bride came rushing up, radiant. " Oh,
do you mind," she said to her husband, " if I hold one of
those banners for a while.-"'

" No, if you want to," the bridegroom answered.

And she took her stand on the picket line.

Children stopped to spell out the inscriptions, and some-
times asked what they meant.

Once, a group '^f boys from a Massachusetts school in-
quired what the colors stood for, and asked to have the
slogan translated. As by one impulse, they lifted their hats
and said, " You ought to have it now." '

Occasionally, distinguished visitors leaving the White
House would smile their appreciation and approvaL On
one occasion Theodore Roosevelt beamed vividly on the

THE PEACEFUL RECEPTION 217

pickets, waving his hat as he passed. As the weather changed
and the winter storms began, the gaiety in the attitude of
their audience deepened to a real admiration. With the
rains, the pickets appeared in slickers and rubber hats.
This was not, of course, unendurable. But, when the freez-
ing cold came, often with snow and swirling winds, picketing
became a real hardship. There were days when it was almost
impossible to stand on the picket line for more than half
an hour at a time. At regular intervals, Smith, the janitor,
assisted at times by a little colored boy, used to appear from
Headquarters, trundling a wheelbarrow. That wheelbdrrow
was piled high with hot bricks covered with gunny-sacking.
He would distribute the bricks among the pickets and they
would stand on them. An observer said that, when the relay
of pickets, leaving at the end of the day, stepped down from
the bricks at the word of command, it was like a line of
statues stepping from their pedestals.

But others — ^and sometimes strangers — sought to mitigate
for the pickets the rigors of the freezing weather. One
woman, coming regularly every day in her car, brought
thermos bottles filled with hot coffee. On one occasion, a
young girl — a passing volunteer — came on picket duty in a
coat too light and shoes too low. While she stood there,
a closed limousine drew up to the curb. A woman alighted
and forced the girl to retire to her car and put on her fur
coat and her geiiters. The stranger held the banner while
the warming-up process was going on. She offered to or-
ganize a committee, made up of older women, who would col-
lect warm clothing for the pickets. In point of fact, the
Virginia and Philadelphia branches of the Congressional
Union presented the pickets with thick gloves, spats, and
slickers for rainy days. Thousands of men and women
from all over the country sent suggestions for their
comfort.

Official kindness, even, was not lacking. One superlatively
cold day, an attache of the President invited the whole
company of pickets into the East Room of the White House.

218 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

The superintendents of the Treasury Building and the
War Department Annex extended to them similar invita-
tions.

The police were, at the beginning, friendly, not only in
words but in acts. An officer stopped one day, after tele-
phoning at the near police box, to say : " You are making
friends every minute. Stick to it! Do not give up. We
are with you and admire your pluck." The majority of
them did not like to do what afterwards they had to do.

As for the White House guards — they were the cham-
pions of the pickets. At the outbreak of the war, the White
House gates were closed for the first time in its history.
The pickets without often informed the guards within as
to the kind of vehicle that demanded entrance of them.
The guards came to treat them as comrades patrolling the-
same beat. Once, when the pickets were five minutes late,
one of these guards said : " We thought you weren't coming,
and we'd have to hold down this place alone."

When the pickets re-convened with the Special War Ses-
sion of the Sixty-fifth Congress on April 2, the White House '
police were most demonstrative in their welcome. They were
glad to see them back : they said they had missed them. And
indeed they had come to look on the women as a kind of
auxiliary police force. Once, when somebody asked a police-
man, " When is the President coming out.!" " Mary Gertrude
Fendall said, " I guess you'd like a dollar for every time
people ask you that." The policeman answered, " I'd rather
have a dollar for every time they ask when are the Suf-
fragists coming out?" The country at large had accepted
the pickets. The directors of the sight-seeing busses pointed
them out as one of the city's sights. Tourists said, oftener
and oftener, " Well, we weren't quite sure where the White
House was until we saw you pickets." And when these
tourists used to crowd about the gates, waiting for the
President's limousine to come out, and the signal was flashed
that the Presidential motor had started, the guards pressed
the crowds away. " Back ! " they would order. " Back !

THE PEACEFUL RECEPTION 219

Back ! All back but the pickets ! No one allowed inside the
line but the pickets ! "

As can be imagined. Headquarters was a busy place dur-
ing the picketing; and sometimes a hectic one. Later, of
course, when the arrests began, and mobs besieged it, it
seethed with excitement. It was not easy always to find
women with the leisure and the inclination to serve on the
picket line before the arrests. But, when arrests began and
imprisonments followed, naturally it became increasingly
difficult.

Many members of the Woman's Party in Wa'shington
looked on their picketing as a part of the day's work. Mrs.
William Kent, who said that no public service she had ever
done gave her such an exalted feeling, always excused her-
self early from teas on Monday. " I picket Mondays from
two to six," she explained simply.

Watchers said that those high groups of purple, white, and
gold banners coming down the streets of Washington were
like the sails, magically vivid and luminous, of some strange
ship. They were indeed the sails of a ship — the mightiest
that women ever launched — but only the women who manned
those sails saw that ship.

3. The War on the Pickets

" I have no son to give my country to fight for democracy
abroad and so I send my daughter to Washington to fight for
democracy at home."

Mrs. S. H. B. Gray of Colorado.

It will be remembered that the arrest of Lucy Burns and
Katherine Morey — the first of a series extending over more
than a year — occurred on June 22.

On June 23, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Gladys Greiner
were arrested in front of the White House. On the same day,
Mabel Vernon and Virginia Arnold were arrested at the
Capitol.

On June 25, twenty women bore Suffrage banners to their
stations. The slogans on these banners were :

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOB UBEETY?

WE ADDEESS OUtt DEMAND FOE THE BAI^IiOT AT THIS TIME
IN NO NAB.KOW, CAPTIOUS, OB, SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM
PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITIZEN
FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND AS A GLORIOUS EX-
AMPLE TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Twelve women were arrested. They were : Mabel Vernon,
Lucy Burns, Gladys Greiner, Katherine Morey, Elizabeth
Stuyvesant, Lavinia Dock, Berta Crone, Pauline Clarke, Vir-
ginia Arnold, Maude Jamison, Annie Arniel, and Mrs. Town-
send Scott.

On Tuesday, June 26, nine women were arrested for
carrying the same banners. They included some of the
women from the day before, and, in addition, Vivian Pierce
and Hazel Hunkins.

220

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 221

A high-handed detail of this arrest was that the women
were overpowered by the police before they had proceeded
half a block.

Most of these women were released after each arrest. The
last six to be arrested were asked to return to court for
trial.

On June 27, six American women were tried in the police
court of the District of Columbia.

These women were: Virginia Arnold, Lavinia Dock,
Maud Jamison, Katherine Morey, Annie Amiel, Mabel
Vernon.

The women defended themselves. Mabel Vernon, who
conducted the case, demanded that the banners they had car-
ried be exhibited in court. It made a comic episode in the
midst of the court proceedings when the policeman, who
had been sent for them, returned, bristling all over his per-
son with banner sticks, and trailing in every direction the
purple, white, and gold. The courtroom crowd burst out
laughing when they read the legend:

ME. PRESIDENT, YOU SAY " LIBERTY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL
DESIRE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT."

There was a technical discussion as to how much side-
walk space the young women occupied, and how near the
White House palings they stood. The Suffrage group had
photographs which showed the deserted pavements at the
time of the arrests.

The women cross-examined the police who testified that
there was no crowd at that time of the morning and that the
women stood with their backs to the White House fence.

The Judge said : " If you had kept on moving, you would
be all right."

" I find these defendants guilty as charged," was his ver-
dict, " of obstructing the highway in violation of the police
regulations and the Act of Congress, and impose a fine of
twenty-five dollars in each case, or in default of that, three
days' imprisonment."

222 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

The six young women refused to pay the fine. They were
each sentenced to three days in the District jail.

When the first pickets came out of jail, a hundred women^
representing many States, gave them a reception breakfast
in the garden of Cameron House.

A subsequent chapter will relate the prison experiences
of these women and of the long line of their successors.

The next picket line went out on Independence Day, July
4., 1917. Five women marched from Headquarters bearing
purple, white, and gold banners. They were: Helena Hill
Weed, Vida MilhoUand, Gladys Greiner, Margaret Whitte-
more. Iris Calderhead. Helena Hill Weed carried a banner :

GOVEKNMENTS DEBIVE THEIR JUST POWER FROM
THE CONSENT OP THE GOVERNED.

Following the advice of the Judge, they kept moving.
Across the street, a crowd had gathered in expectation of
arrests. Standing about were policemen — a newspaper man
said twenty-nine. The police walked along parallel with the
women, and the crowd followed them. As the banner-
bearers crossed the street to the White House, the police
seized them before they could get onto the sidewalks. An'
augmenting crowd surged about them. Some of the on-
lookers protested, but most of them took their cue from the
police, and tore the flags away from the women. Apart
from the pickets, Kitty Marion, who for some weeks had
been selling the Suffragist on the streets, was attacked by a
by-stander who snatched her papers away from her, tearing
one of them up. Miss Marion was arrested. She protested
at the behavior of her assailant and he was arrested too.
Hazel Hunkins, who was not a part of the procession, came
upon a man who had seized one of the banners carried by
the pickets and was bearing it away. Miss Hunkins at-
tempted to get it from him, and she also was arrested.

The police commandeered automobiles, and commenced
bundling the women into them.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 223

Immediately another group of women came marching up
Pennsylvania Avenue on the opposite side of the street.
This second group contained Mrs. Frances Green, Mrs.
Lawrence Lewis, Lucile Shields, Joy Young, Elizabeth
Stuyvesant, Lucy Bums. Joy Young, who is a little crea-
ture, led this group. They reached the West gate of the
White House, and there the police arrested them. A Wash-
ington paper described with great glee how, like a tigress,
little Joy Young fought to retain her banner, and how
finally three policemen managed to overpower her. The
women were booked for " unlawful assembly " all except
Kitty Marion, who was charged with " disorderly conduct."

Helena Hill Weed and Lucy Burns cross-examined the
witnesses on behalf of the women. Mrs. Weed insisted that
the torn, yellow banner should be brought, into court.
Throughout the trial, it hung suspended from the Judge's
bench — governments dekive their jttst powers from the
CONSENT OP THE GOVERNED. Lucy Bums, examining the
police officers, asked why citizens carrying banners on June
21 were protected by the police, and on July 4 arrested for
doing the same thing. The officer replied that they wer6
protected on June 21 because he had no orders for that day.
The orders which came later were, he said, not to allow
picketing, though he admitted there were no directions about
seizing banners. The women brought out by skillful cross-
questioning that it was the action of the police which had
collected a disorderly crowd, and not the marching of the
two groups of women ; that at the former trial of a group
of Suffrage pickets, the Judge himself had declared that
marching pickets did not violate the law.

Lucy Burns summed up the case for the Suffragists as
follows :

I wish to state first — she said — as the others have stated, that
we proceeded quietly down the street opposite the White House
with our banners; that we intended to keep marching; that our
progress was halted by the police, not the crowd. There was no
interference on the part of the crowd until after the police had

224 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

arrested us and turned their backs on the crowd. Our contention
is as others have stated that the presence of the crowd there was
caused by the action of the police and the previous announcement
of the police that they would arrest the pickets, and not by our
action which was entirely legal.

In the second place I wish to call your attention to the fact
that there is no law whatever against our carrying banners
through the streets of Washington, or in front of the White
House. It has been stated that we were directed by the police
not to carry banners before the White House, not to picket at
the White House. That is absolutely untrue. We have received
only one instruction from the chief of police and that was de-
livered by Major Pullman in person. He said that we must not
carry banners outside of Headquarters. We have had no other
communication on this subject since that time.

We, of course, realized that that was an extraordinary direc-
tion, because I don't think it was ever told an organization that
it could not propagate its views, and we proceeded naturally to
assume that Major Pullman would not carry out that order in
action because he would not be able to sustain it in any just
court.

We- have only been able since to judge instructions by the
action of the police, and the actions of the police have varied
from day to day, so that as a point of fact, we don't know what
the police have been ordered to do — what is going to be done.
On one occasion we stepped out of Headquarters with a banner —
the so-called Bussian banner — and it was torn to fragments before
we had reached the gate of our premises, although Major Pull-
man had given no notice to us at that time. Another time we
proceeded down Madison Place with banners, walking in front of
the Belasco Theatre, and were arrested. Another time we were
allowed to proceed down Madison Place and the north side of
the Avenue and were not molested.

Now the district attorney has stated that on account of the
action of this court a few days ago, we knew and deliberately
did wrong. But we were advised then by the Judge — and he
was familiar with the first offense — that we would have been
all right if we had kept on walking. On July 4 we kept on
walking and this is the result of that action.

I myself was informed on June 22 by various police, that if I
would keep on walking, my action would be entirely legal. We
were innocent of any desire to do anything wrong when we left
our premises.

It is evident that the proceedings in this court are had for the

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 225

purpose of suppressing our appeal to the President of the United
States, and not for the purpose of accusing us of violating the
police regulations regarding traflBc in the District of Columbia.

The eleven women were found " Guilty," and sentenced to
pay a fine of twenty-five dollars or to serve three days in
the District jail. They refused to pay the fine, and were
sent to jail. The case against Hazel Hunkins was dismissed.
Kitty Marion was found " Not Guilty," of disorderly con-
duct.

In the meantime, Alice Paul had been seized with what
looked like a severe illness. A physician finally warned her
that she might not live two weeks. It was decided, on July
14, to send her to a hospital in Philadelphia for treatment.
The day before she left, a meeting of the Executive Board
was held at her bedside in the Washington hospital. Al-
though later diagnosis proved more favorable, and Miss Paul
was to be away from Washington only a month, many of the
women present at that meeting believed that they woul4
never see her again. That was a poignant moment, for the
devotion of her adherents to their leader can neither be
described nor measured. But they felt that there was only
one way to serve her if she left them forever and that was
to carry out her plans. . . . The next day they went out
on the picket line.

That next day was the French national holiday — July 14.
The Woman's Party had, as was usual with them when they
planned a demonstration, announced this through the press.

On the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, therefore,
three groups of women carrying banners, one inscribed with
the French national motto: Libekty, EauALixY, Fkatee-
NiTY, and the Woman's Party colors, marched one after
another from Headquarters.

In the first group were Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, Mrs. Paul
Reyneau, Mrs. B. R. Kincaid, Julia Hurburt, Minnie D.
Abbot, Anne Martin.

In the second group were, Amelia Himes Walker, Florence
Bayard Hilies, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Janet Fotheringham.

226 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

In the third group were, Mrs. John Winters Brannan,
Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., Louise P. Mayo Doris Stevens,
Mary H. Ingham, Eleanor Calnan.

A big crowd, attracted by the expectation of excitement,
had collected outside Headquarters. The police made no
effort to disperse them. When the first group appeared,
there was some applause and cheering. They crossed the
street, and took up their station at the upper gate of the
White House. As nothing happened to the first group, the
second group, led by Amelia Himes Walker, emerged from
Headquarters and took up a position at the lower gate of
the White House. However, the instant the two groups had
established themselves, the policemen, who had been making
a pretense of 'clearing the sidewalks, immediately arrested
them.

The third group of pickets, however, came forward undis-
mayed, their fiags high. The crowd applauded them; then
fell back and permitted the pickets to take their places. The
police in this third case waited for four minutes, watches in
hand. Then they arrested the women on the charge of
" violating an ordinance."

At the station the sixteen women were booked for " un-
lawful assembly." On July 17, Judge MuUowney, sentenced
the sixteen women to sixty days in Occoquan Workhouse on
the charge of "obstructing traffic."

A detailed consideration of the treatment of the pickets
in Occoquan and the Jail is reserved for a later chapter. It
will, therefore, be stated briefly here that these sixteen women
were pardoned by the President after three days in Occoquan.
However, they were submitted to indignities there such as
white prisoners were nowhere else compelled to endure.
When J. A. H. Hopkins and Gilson Gardner were per-
mitted to visit their wives, they did not at first recognize
them in the haggard, exhausted-looking group of creatures
in prison garb, sitting in the reception room. One of the
women, however, seeing her husband, half rose from her
chair.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 227

"You sit down!" Superintendent Whittaker yelled,
pointing his finger at her.

J. A. H. Hopkins, who had been a member of the
Democratic National Campaign Committee of 1916, went
immediately to the President and told him the conditions
under which these women were being held. Gilson Gardner,
a well-known newspaper man who had supported Wilson
throughout the previous election campaign, wrote a long
communication to the President on the same subject.
Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York
and one of the President's closest friends and warmest ad-
visors, who was later in so gallant a way to show his dis-
approval of the Suffrage situation, saw the President also.
President Wilson professed himself as beinjg " shocked " at
his revelations. He said he did not know what was going on
at OccoquaQ.

"After this, Mr. President," Mr. Malone replied, "you
do know."

After her release, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins wanted to find
out whether this pardon also meant that the President sup-
ported their Amendment. She therefore wrote him the fol-
lowing letter:

Mr DKAR Mb. President:

The pardon issued to me by you is accompanied by no ex-
planation. It can have but one of two meanings — either you
have satisfied yourself, as you personally stated to Mr. Hopkini^,
that I violated no law of the country, and no ordinance of this
city, in exercising my right of peaceful petition, and therefore
you, as an act of justice, extended to me your pardon, or you
pardoned me to save yourself the embarrassment of an acute and
distressing political situation.

In this case, in thus saving yourself, you have deprived me
of the right through appeal to prove by legal processes that the
police powers of Washington despotically and falsely convicted
me on a false charge, in order to save you personal or political
embarrassment.

228 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

As you have not seen fit to tell the public the true reason, I
am compelled to resume my peaceful petition for political liberty.
If the police arrest me, I shall carry the case to the Supreme
Court if necessary. If the police do not arrest me, I shall believe
that you do not believe me guilty. This is the only method by
which I can release myself from the intolerable and false posi-
tion in which your unexplained pardon has placed me.

Mr. Hopkins and I repudiate absolutely the current report
that I would accept a pardon which was the act of your good
nature.

In this case, which involves my fundamental constitutional
rights, Mr. Hopkins and myself do not desire your Presidential
benevolence, but American justice.

Furthermore, we do not believe that you would insult us by
extending to us your good-nature under these circumstances.

This pardon without any explanation of your reasons for its
issuance, in no way mitigates the injustice inflicted upon me by
the violation of my constitutional civil right.
Respectfully yours,

Alison Tchnbuli. Hopkins.

After having written this letter, quite alone and at the
crowded hour of five o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Hopkins
carried a banner to the White House gates, and stood there
for ten minutes. The banner said : we ask not pardon foe

OUESELVES BUT JUSTICE FOR ALL AMERICAN WOMEN. A large

and curious crowd gathered, but nobody bothered her.
While she stood there, the President passed through the
gates and saluted.

On Monday, July 23, exactly a month from the time that
the police had first interfered with the picketing and the
Suffragists, the daily Suffrage picket was resumed. The
crowds streaming home in the afternoon from the offices,
laughed when they saw the banners at the White House
gates again. Some stopped to congratulate the women.

Time went on and still the President did nothing about
putting the Amendment through. As always when it was
not strikingly brought to his attention, Suffrage seemed to
pass from his mind. It became again necessary to call his

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 229

attention to the Amendment. Often it seemed as though the
President's attention could be gained only by calling the
country's attention to his inaction.

Within a week appeared a new banner. Elihu Root, the
Special Envoy of the United States to Russia, had just come
home from a country which had enfranchised its women.
With the other members of the American Mission to Russia,
he called at the White House, and at the gates he was con-
fronted by these words:

TO ENVOY root:

YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS M/.NHOOD IN THE
SUPPORT OP UBERTY,

WHOSE LIBERTY?

THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. 20,000,000 WOMEN ARE DENIED
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO
REPRESENTATION IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.

TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CANNOT FIGHT AGAINST
LIBERTY AT HOME WHILE HE TELLS US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY
ABROAD.

TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA FREE FOR DEMOCRACY BEFORE
HE ASKS THE MOTHERS OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO
THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE.

ASK HIM HOW HE COULD REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN
CITIZENS WHEN HE HAS FORCED MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS
OUT OP THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.

For two hours, Lucy Ewing and Mary Winsor stood hold-
ing this banner. It attracted the largest crowd that the
pickets had as yet experienced. But the police managed
them perfectly — although in the courts there had been plenty
of testimony that they could not manage similar crowds —
and without a word of protest — although half a block was
completely obstructed for two hours.

230 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

The following day saw scenes the most violent in tht his-
tory of the pickets. This was August 14. Catherine
Flanagan's story of this period of terror is one of the most
thrilling in the annals of the Party:

That day a new banner was carried for the first time by Eliza-
beth Stuyvesant — the " Kaiser " banner. The banner read:

KAISER WILSON, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR SYMPATHY WITH
THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT ^ELF-GOVERNING ?

TWENTY MILLION AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNING.
TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE.

I do not remember when Elizabeth took this banner out, but
I think she was on the four o'clock shift. For a half an hour
people gathered about the banner. The crowd grew and grew.
You felt there was something brewing in them, but what, you
could not guess. Suddenly it came — a man dashed from the
crowd and tore the banner down. Immediately, one after
another, the other banners were torn down. As fast as this
happened, the banner bearers went back to Headquarters;
returned with tri-colors and reinforcements; took up their sta-
tions again. Finally the whole line of pickets, bannerless by this
time, marched back to Headquarters. The crowd, which was
fast changing into a mob, followed us into Madison Place. As
the pickets emerged again, the mob jumped them at the very
doors of Cameron House, tore their banners away from them
and destroyed them. By this time the mob, which had become a
solid mass of people, choking the street and filling the park, had
evolved a leader, a yeoman in uniform, who incited everybody
about him to further work of destruction. Suddenly, as if by
magic, a laddet appeared in their midst. A yeoman placed it
against Cameron House, and accompanied by a little boy, he
started up. He pulled down the tri-color of the Woman's Party
which hung over the door. In the meantime, it was impossible for
us to take any banners out. We locked the door, but two strange
women, unknown to the Woman's Party, came in. They opened
a window on the second floor and were about to push the ladder,
on which the sailor and the little boy still stoodj back into the
street when Ella Morton Dean drew them away.

At the other side of the house and at the same moment, another
member of the crowd climbed up the balcony and pulled down
the American flag which hung beside the tri-color. Immediately
Virginia Arnold and Lucy Burns appeared on the balcony carry-

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 231

ing, the one the Kaiser banner and the other the tri-color. The
crowd began to throw eggs, tomatoes, and apples at them, but the
two girls stood, Virginia Arnold white, Lucy Burns flushed, but —
everybody who saw them comments on this — with a look of steady
consecration, absolutely moveless, holding the tri-color which had
never before been taken from its place over the door at Head-
quarters.

Suddenly a shot rang out from the crowd. A bullet went
through a window of the second story, directly over the heads of
two women who stood there — Ella Morton Dean and Georgiana
Sturgess — and imbedded itself in the ceiling of the hall. The
only man seen to have a revolver was a yeoman in uniform, who
immediately ran up the street. By this time Elizabeth Stuy-
vesant had joined Lucy Burns and Virginia Arnold on the bal-
cony; others also came. Three yeomen climbed up onto the bal-
cony and wrested the tri-color banners from the girls. As one of
these men climbed over the railing, he struck Georgiana Sturgess.
" Why did you do that ? " she demanded, dumbfounded. The
man paused a moment, apparently as amazed as she. " I don't
know," he answered; then he tore the banner out of her hands
and descended the ladder. Lucy Bums, whose courage is
physical as well as spiritual, held her banner until the last
moment. It seemed as though she were going to be dragged over
the railing of the balcony, but two of the yeomen managed to
tear it from her hands before this occurred. New banners were
brought to replace those that had disappeared.

While this was going on, Katherine Morey and I went out the
back way of Headquarters, made our way to the White House
gates, unfurled a Kaiser banner, and stood there for seventeen
minutes unnoticed. There was a policeman standing beside each
of us, but when the yeoman who had led the mob and who was
apparently about to report for duty, tore at the banner, they did
not interfere. We were dragged along the pavements, but the
banner was finally destroyed.

By this time the crowd had thinned a little in front of Head-
quarters. The front door had been unlocked when we went back.
Five different times, however, we and others, led always by Lucy
Burns, made an effort to bear our banners to the White House
gates again. Always, a little distance from Headquarters, we
were beset by the mob and our banners destroyed.

About five o'clock, the police reserves appeared and cleared the
street. Thereupon, every woman who had been on picket duty
that day, bearing aloft the beautiful tri-color, went over to the
White House gates, marched up and down the pavements three

232 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

times. The police protected us until we started home. When,
however, our little procession crossed the street to the park, the
crowd leaped upon us again, and again destroyed our banners.
Madeline Watson was knocked down and kicked. Two men car-
ried her into Headquarters.

While the crowd was milling its thickest before Headquarters,
somebody said to a policeman standing there, " Why don't you
arrest those men ? " " Those are not our orders," the policeman
replied.

Twenty-two lettered banners and fourteen tri-color flags were
destroyed that day.

During all the early evening, men were trying to climb over
the back fence of the garden to get into Cameron House. None
of us went to bed that night. We were afraid that something —
we knew not what — might happen.

The next 3ay, August 15, was only a degree less violent.
The Suffrage pickets went on duty as usual at twelve o'clock,
and picketed all that afternoon.

All the afternoon yeomen, small boys, and hoodliuns at-
tacked the women without hindrance. Elizabeth Stuyvesant
was struck by a soldier who destroyed her flag. Beulah
Amidon was thrown down by a sailor, who stole her flag.
Alice Paul was knocked down three times. One sailor
dragged her thirty feet along the White House; sidewalk in
his attempts to tear off her Suffrage sash, gashing her neck
brutally. They were without protection until five o'clock.

During this time they lost fifty tri-color banners and one
Kaiser banner.

The pickets were, of course, constantly going back to
Headquarters for new banners, and constantly returning
with them.

At five o'clock, in anticipation of the President's appear-
ance, and while still the turmoil was going on, five police
oflicers quickly and efficiently cleared a wide aisle in front
of each gate, and as quickly and as efficiently drove the mob
across the street. The President, however, left by a rear
gate.

On the next day, August 16, the policy toward the pickets
changed again. Fifty policemen appeared on the scene, and

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 233

instead of permitting Suffragists to be attacked by others,
they attacked them themselves. Virginia Arnold was set
upon by three police officers. Before she could relinquish
her banner to them, her arms were twisted and her hands
bruised. Elizabeth Stuyvesant, Natalie Gray, and Lucy
Burns were all severely handled by the police, Elizabeth
Smith and Ruth Crocker, who were carrying furled flags,
were knocked down. When men, more chivalrous-minded
than the crowd, came to their rescue, they were arrested.

In the late afternoon, the crowd grew denser. The police,
therefore, ceased their efforts, and waited while the crowd
attacked the women and destroyed their banners An officer
threatened to arrest one young woman who defended her
banner against an assailant.

" Here, give that up ! " called the second officer to a girl
who was struggling with a man for the possession of her flag.

During these days of mob attacks, the pickets had been
put to it to get outside Headquarters to some coign of van-
tage where they could stand for a few seconds before the in-
evitable rush. For the first time in the history of their
picketing the girls could not carry their banners on poles.
Either the mobs seized them or the policemen who lined the
sidewalks outside Headquarters. The pickets carried them
inside their sweaters and hats, in sewing bags, or pinned
them, folded in newspapers or magazines, under their skirts.
One picket was followed- by crowds who caught a gleam of
yellow at the hem of her gown. When they got to the White
House, the pickets held the banners in their hands. Lucy
Burns kept sending out relays with new banners to take the
place of those which were torn.

Catherine Flanagan says that on August 16 when the four
o'clock shift of the picket line started out, Lucy Burns
pointed to rolls of banners done up in various receptacles and
said, " Take out as many of these as you can carry and
keep them concealed until it is necessary to use them." The
eight pickets distributed the banners in different parts of
their clothes, and approaching the White House by various

234 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

routes, suddenly lined themselves against the White House
fence, each unfurling a Kaiser banner at the word of com-
mand. They were faced by forty policemen, policewomen,
and secret service men. Instantly the police were on them.
The pickets held the banners as long as it was physically
possible — it took three policemen to remove each banner.
The policemen heaved sighs of relief, as though their work
for the day was done, turned, and moved to the edge of the
pavement. Instantly, eight more banners appeared and as
instantly they fell on the pickets again. This happened
seven times. As often as the police turned with captured
banners in their hands, reinforcing pickets in the crowd
handed fresh banners to the pickets at the gates. Fifty-six
Kaiser banners were captured this day. When the Kaiser
banners were exhausted, the eight pickets returned to Head-
quarters and soon emerged bearing the tri-color. The tac-
tics of the police changed then. They did not, themselves,
attack the pickets, but they permitted the crowds to do so.
In all, one hundred and forty-eight flags were destroyed.

On August 17, Major Pullman, police head of Washing-
ton, called upon Alice Paul, and warned her that young
women carrying banners would be arrested.

Alice Paul replied, " The picketing will go on as usual."
In a letter to his friend, Major Pullman, quoted in the
Suffragist of August 25, Gilson Gardner put the case con-
cisely and decisively. , . .

You must see, Pullman, that you cannot be right in what you
have done in this matter. You have given the pickets adequate
protection; you have arrested them and had them sent to jail
and the workhouse, you have permitted the crowds to mob them,
and then you have had your officers do much the same thing by
forcibly taking their banners from them. In some of these ac-
tions, you must have been wrong. If it was right to give them
protection and let them stand at the White House for five months,
both before and after the war, it was not right to do what you
did later.

You say it was not right and that you were " lenient," when

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 235

you gave them protection. You cannot mean that. The Tightness
or wrongness must be a matter of law, not of personal discretion,
and for you to attempt to substitute your discretion is to set up
a little autocracy in place of the settled laws of the land. That
would justify a charge of " Kaiserism " right here in our
Capitol city.

The truth is, Pullman, you were right when you gave these
women protection. That is what the police are for. When there
are riots they are supposed to quell them, not by quelling the
" proximate cause," but by quelling the rioters.

I know your police ofiBcers now quite well and I find that they
are most happy when they are permitted to do their duty. They
did not like that dirty business of permitting a lot of sailors and
street riffraff to rough the girls. . . .

It is not my opinion alone when I say that the women were
entitled to police protection, not arrest. President Wilson has
stated repeatedly that these women were entirely withini^their
legal and constitutional rights, and that they should not have
been molested. Three reputable men, two of them holding office
in this Administration, have told me what the President said,
and I have no reason to doubt their word. ^ If the President has
changed his mind he has not changed the law or the Constitution,
and what he said three weeks ago is just as true today.

In excusing what you have done, you say that the women have
carried banners with " offensive " inscriptions on them. You
refer to the fact that they have addressed the President as
" £aiser Wilson." As a matter of fact, not an arrest you have
made — and the arrests now number more than sixty — has been
for carrying one of those " offensive " banners. The women were
carrying merely the Suffrage colors or quotations from President
Wilson's writings.

But suppose the banners were offensive? Who made you
censor of banners.^ The law gives you no such power. Even
when you go through the farce of a police court trial, the charge
is " obstructing traffic," which shows conclusively that you are
not willing to go into court on the real issue.

No. As chief of police you have no more right to complain of
the sentiments on a banner than, you have of the sentiments in
an editorial in the Washington Post, and you have no more right
to arrest the banner-bearers than you have to arrest the owner of
the Washington Post. So long as the law against obscenity and
profanity is observed, you have no business with the words on
the banners. Congress refused to pass a press censorship law.
There are certain lingering traditions to the effect that a people's

236 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

liberties are closely bound up with the right to talk things out
and those who are enlightened know that the only proper answer
to words is words.

During the entire afternoon of that day — ^August 17 —
the day that Major Pullman called on Alice Paul — the sen-
tinels stood at their posts. One of the banners read :

ENGLAND AND ETJSSIA AEE ENFRANCHISING WOMEN

IN WAE time;
Another :

THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS OUR BANNERS DESTROTED
BECAUSE THEY TELL THE TRUTH.

At intervals of fifteen minutes — for two hours — ^the
pickets were told by a captain of police that they would be
arrested if they did not move. But they held their station.
At half-past four, the hour at which the thousand of gov-
ernment clerks invade the streets^ there was enough of a
crowd to give the appearance that the pickets were " block-
ing traffic." Lavinia Dock; Edna Dixon; Natalie Gray;
Madeline Watson; Catherine Flanagan; Lucy Ewing, were
arrested soon after four o'clock. Their trial lasted just
forty minutes. One police officer testified that they were
obstructing traffic. They all refused to pay the ten dollar
fine, which, though it would have released them, would also
have been an admission of guilt, and Police Magistrate
Pugh sentenced them to serve thirty days in the Government
Workhouse.

On August 23, six women appeared at the White House,
bearing banners. They were, Pauline Adams; Gertrude
Hunter; Clara Fuller; Kate Boeckh; Margaret Fothering-
ham ; Mrs. Henry L. Lockwood. All of their banners quoted
words from the President's works:

I TELL YOU SOLEMNLY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE CAN-
NOT POSTPONE JUSTICE ANY LONGER IN THESE UNITED(

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 237

STATES, AND 1 DON't WISH TO SIT DOWN AND LET ANT MAN
TAKE CABE OF ME WITHOUT MY HA-VING AT LEAST A VOICE IN
IT ; AND IF HE DOESN't LISTEN TO MY ADVICE I AM GOING TO
MAKE IT AS UNPLEASANT FOE HIM AS I CAN.

In ten minutes they were all arrested. When they ap-
peared before Police Magistrate Pugh, Clara Kinsley Fuller
said in part:

I am the editor, owner, and publisher of a daily and weekly
newspaper in Minnesota. I pay taxes to this government, yet
I have nothing to say in the making of those laws which contrdl
me, either as an individual or as a business woman. Taxation
without representation is undemocratic. For that reason, I came
to Washington to help the Federal Amendment fight. When I
learned that President Wilson said that picketing was perfectly
legal, I went on the- picket line and did my bit towards making
democracy safe at home, while our men are abroad making
democracy safe for the world.

Margaret Potheringham, a school-teacher, said:

I have fifteen British cousins who are in the fighting line
abroad. Some are back very badly wounded, and others are still
in France. I have two brothers who are to be in our fighting line.
They were not drafted; they enlisted. I am made of the same
stuff that those boys are made of ; and, whether it is abroad or at
home, we are fighting for the same thing. We are fighting for
the thing we hold nearest our hearts — for democracy.

To these pleas, Judge Pugh answered that the President
was "not the one to petition for justice"; that the people
of the District virtuously refrained from picketing the
White House for the vote for themselves " for- fear the mili-
tary would take possession of the streets."

I quote the Suffragist of September 2;

Here is a sample of Judge Pugh's logic:

" These ladies have been told repeatedly that this law was ample
to prevent picketing in front of the White House, or anywhere
-else on the sidewafis of the District of Columbia; that it was
not the fashion to petition Congress in that way, to stand in front

238 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

of the White House, the President's mansion, to petition some-
body else, a mile and a half away. The President does not have
to be petitioned. . . . You ladies observe all the laws that give
you benefits, property rights that legislatures composed of men
have passed . . . and those that are aimed at preserving the
peace and good order of the community you do not propose to
observe."

And much more to the same effect, which proved that Judge
Pugh knew nothing of the long vigil of the pickets at the doors
of Congress, and apparently nothing of the President's actual
dictatorship.

Finally he admitted that he did not care to send " ladies of
standing " to jail, and would refrain if they promised to stop
picketing, although they were not charged with picketing. In
the face of the dead silence that followed, he pronounced sen-
tence: A fine of twenty-five dollars or thirty days at Occoquan
Workhouse. Every woman refused to pay the fine.

Attorney Matthew O'Brien represented the women in the Dis-
trict Court, appealing finally from the judgment of the court.

On August 28, the same women, with Cornelia Beach,
Vivian Fierce, Maud Jamison, and Lucy Burns, were again
arrested, and given the same sentence. An appeal was
granted them again, the Judge announcing that this was the
last appeal he would give in the picketing cases until a deci-
sion had been given by the Court of Appeals.

On September 4, the day of the parade of the drafted men,
thirteen women were arrested. They were: Abby Scott
Baker, Dorothy Bartlett, Annie Arniel, Pauline Adams,
Mrs. W. W. Chisholm, Lucy Bums, Margaret Fothering-
ham, Lucy Branham, Julia Emory, Eleanor Calnan, Edith
Ainge, Maude Malone, Mary Winsor.

The banner these women bore was inscribed:

MB. PEESIDENT, HOW LONG MtJST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE
IN THE GOVERNMENT THAT IS CONSCKIPTING THEIR SONS.'

They were sent to Occoquan for sixty days.
At this vivid interval in the history of the Woman's Party
occurred a notable incident.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 239

Dudley Field Malone, who had long been a staunch friend
of the Woman's Party — and one of the few men who had
been willing to make a sacrifice for Suffrage — resigned his
position as Collector of the Port of New York as a protest
against the intolerable Suffrage situation. This was a beau
geste on the part of Mr. Malone. There are those who be-
lieve that that gallant deed will go rolling down the centuries
gathering luster as it rolls. It had an inevitable effect, not
only on the members of the Woman's Party, but on the
members of other Suffrage organizations as well, and it pro-
duced a profound impression on the country at large.

His letter of resignation reads as follows :

The White House,

Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. President:

Last autumn, as the representative of your Administration, I
went into the Woman Suffrage States to urge your re-election.
The most difficult argument to meet among the seven million
voters was the failure of the Democratic Party, throughout four
years of power, to pass the Federal Suffrage Amendment, look-
ing towards the enfranchisement of all the women in the country.
Throughout those States, and particularly in California, which
ultimately decided the election by the votes of women, the women
voters were urged to support you, even though Judge Hughes
had already declared for the Federal Suffrage Amendment, be-
cause you and your Party, through liberal leadership, were more
likely nationally to enfranchise the rest of the women of the
country than were your opponents.

And if the women of the West voted to re-elect you, I promised
them I would spend all my energy, at any sacrifice to myself, to
get the present Democratic Administration to pass the Federal
Suffrage Amendment.

But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting
splendid American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not
for carrying offensive banners, nor for picketing, but on the
technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial even of their
constitutional right to petition for, and demand the passage of,
the Federal Suffrage Amendment. It, therefore, now becomes
my profound obligation actively to keep my promise to the
women of the West.

240 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

In more than twenty States it is a practical impossibility to
amend the State constitutions; so the women of those States can
only be enfranchised by the passage of the Federal Suffrage
Amendment. Since England and Bussia, in the midst of the
great war, have assured the national enfranchisement of their
women, should we not be jealous to maintain our democratic
leadership in the world by the speedy national enfranchisement
of American women ?

To me, Mr. President, as I urged upon you in Washington two
months ago, this is not only a measure of justice and democracy,
it is also an urgent war measure. The women of the nation are,
and always will be, loyal to the country, and the passage of the
Suffrage Amendment is only the first step toward their national
emancipation. But unless the government takes at least this first
step toward their enfranchisement, how can the government ask
millions of American women, educated in our schools and col-
leges, and millions of American women in our homes, or toiling
for economic independence in every line of industry, to give up
by conscription their men and happiness to a war for democracy
in Europe while these women citizens are denied the right to
vote on the policies of the government which demands of them
such sacrifice?

For this reason many of your most ardent friends and sup-
porters feel that the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment
is a war measure which could appropriately be urged by you at
this session of Congress. It is true that this Amendment would
have to come from Congress, but the present Congress shows no
earnest desire to enact this legislation for the simple reason that
you, as the leader of the Party in power, have not yet sug-
gested it.

For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that
no vital piece of legislation has come through Congress these five
years except by your extraordinary and brilliant leadership.
And millions of men and women today hope that you will give
the Federal Suffrage Amendment to the women of the country
by the valor of your leadership now. It will hearten the mothers
of the nation, eliminate a just grievance, and turn the devoted
energies of brilliant women to a more hearty support of the gov-
ernment in this crisis.

As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many States I have
advocated your policies and the war. I was the first man of your
Administration, nearly five years ago, publicly to advocate pre-
paredness, and helped to found the first Plattsburg training
camp. And if, with our troops mobilizing in France, you will

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 241

give American women this measure for their political freedom,
they will support with greater enthusiasm your hope and the hope
of America for world freedom.

I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by
women in the pursuit of their political liberty ; yet, Mr. President,
the Committee on Suffrage of the United States Senate was
formed in 1883, when I was one year old; this same Federal
Suffrage Amendment was first intiroduced i^ Congress in 1878;
brave women like Susan B. Anthony were 'petitioning Congress
for the Suffrage before the Civil War, and at the time of the
Civil War men like William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, and
Wendell Phillips assured the Suffrage leaders that if they aban-
doned their fight for Suffrage, when the war was ended the men
of the nation, " out of gratitude," would enfranchise the women
of the country !

And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding
for over half a century the political right or privilege to vote,
and had been continuously ignored or met with evasion by suc-
cessive Congresses, as have the women, you, Mr. President, as a
lover of liberty, would be the first to comprehend and forgive
their inevitable impatience and righteous indignation. Will not
this Administration, re-elected to powfip by the hope and faith
of the women of the West, handsomely reward that faith by
taking action now for the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amend-
ment?

In the port of New York, during the last four years, billions
of dollars in the export and import trade of the country have
been handled by the men of the customs service; their treatment
of the traveling public has radically changed, their vigilance
supplied the evidence for the Lusitania note; the neutrality was
rigidly maintained; the great German fleet guarded, captured,
and repaired; substantial economies and reforms have been con-
cluded, and my ardent industry has been given to this great
office of your appointment. But now I wish to leave these
finished tasks, to return to my profession of the law, and to give
all my leisure time to fight as hard for the political freedom of
women as I have always fought for your liberal leadership.

It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first cam-
paigned with you when you were running for Governor of New
Jersey. In every circumstance throughout those years, I have
served you with the most respectful affection and unshadowed
devotion. It is no small sacrifice now for me, as a member of
your Administration, to sever our political relationship. But I
think it is high time that men in this generation, at some cost to

242 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

themselves, stood up to battle for the national enfranchisement
of American women. So in order effectively to keep my promise
made in the West, and more freely to go into this larger field of
democratic effort, I hereby resign my o£Sce as Collector of the
Port of New York, to take effect at once, or at your earliest
convenience.

Yours respectfully,

Dudley Field Malone.

On September 13, six pickets left Headquarters at half-
past four in the afternoon. They were: Katherine Fisher,
Mrs. Frederick Willard Kendall, Mrs. Mark Jackson, Ruth
Crocker, Nina Samardin, Eleanor Gwinter. The two lettered
banners were borne by Miss Fisher and Mrs. Kendall:

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOB LIBEKTY.'
ME. PEESIDENT, WHAT WELL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFBAGB?!

They marched straight to the lower gate. A crowd had
already collected there. Another crowd lined the edge of the
sidewalk across the street on Lafayette Square. There were
two police officers on the White House sidewalk, and several
across the way.

The crowd made way for the group of pickets, and they
took their accustomed places at the gate. For a few min-
utes nothing happened. During all these days of roughness
and riot, it had been very difficult to take pictures. It
seemed as though the thing the police most feared was the
truth. They would not permit the moving-picture men to
record these vivid events. They even confiscated cameras.
Photographers ran the risk always of having their cameras
destroyed. On this day, Gladys Greiner, a Suffragist, was
taking pictures of the crowd. As she leveled her kodak at
a police captain, he kicked her. She continued to take her
pictures nevertheless. A sailor and a marine, both in uni-
form, instead of moving as the police had ordered, came
closer and closer to the pickets. Suddenly, the sailor
snatched the banner from the pole. The two men tore the

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 243

banner into pieces ; passed the scraps to their friends. The
police looked on without interference. Then they arrested
the women. They were taken to Judge Mullowny.

Judge Mullowny had been away for two months from the
bench. In the meantime, his ideas on the offense of picket-
ing had undergone another change. His first decision in re-
gard to the Suffragists was that they obstructed traffic, and,
in regard to the banners, that they " had nothing to do
with the case." Later, he decided that the banners were
" treasonable." Now, in regard to their banner, How Long
Must Women Wait for Liberty, he decided : " Since this
banner is unlikely to give offense, I will give you women a
light sentence this time."

All evidence except that of the two policemen was ruled
out. In regard to the conduct of the police captain in kick-
ing Miss Greiner, the Judge said : " I have nothing to do
with those things ; they have nothing to do with the case."

He asked, " Would you pay a fine instead of going to
prison, if I made the fine fifty cents ? "

" Not if you made it five cents," replied Mrs. Kendall, who
spoke for the six prisoners.

He therefore sentenced them to thirty days in the gov-
ernment workhouse.

On September 22, four more Suffragists were arrested.
They were Peggy Baird Johns, Margaret Wood Kessler,
Ernestine Hara, Hilda Blumberg. They carried a new ban-
ner this time, quoting words from an early work of the
President. It said:

PRESIDENT WILSON, WHAT DID YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAID,
" WE HAVE SEEN A GOOD MANY SINGUIjAK THINGS HAPPEN
RECENTLY. WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT IT IS UNPATRIOTIC TO
CRITICIZE PUBLIC ACTION. WELL, IF IT IS, THERE IS A DEEP
DISGRACE RESTING UPON THE ORIGIN OF THIS NATION. THIS
NATION ORIGINATED IN THE SHARPEST SORT OF CRITICISM OF
PUBLIC POLICY. WE ORIGINATED, TO PUT IT IN THE VER-

244. THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

NACTTLAa, IN A KICK AND IF IT IS UNPATRIOTIC TO KICK, WHY,
THEN THE GROWN MAN IS UNLIKE THE CHILD. WE HAVE FOE-
GOTTEN THE VEEY PRINCIPLE OP OUR ORIGIN IP WE HAVE
FORGOTTEN HOW TO OBJECT, HOW TO RESIST, HOW TO AGI-
TATE, HOW TO PULL DOWN AND BUILD UP EVEN TO THE
EXTENT OF REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICES IF IT BE NECESSARY TO
READJUST MATTERS. I HAVE FORGOTTEN MY HISTORY IF THAT

The Suffragist of September 29 describes this event:

When the pickets this week took up their stations at the East
gate of the White House, and unfurled the " seditious " utter-
ance of the President himself, the banner was almost immediately
iconfiscated by the two police officers who had hurried to the spot.
They seemed anxious to keep from the little pressing crowd the
fact that the President had once been not only a Democrat, but
a democrat.

The two officers then stood directly in front of the little group
of women carrying tri-colored flags, with their backs to what
crowd there was. More than half of the wide White House
sidewalks were vacant of pedestrians. The officers had evidently
been ordered to let the crowd collect for a certain number of
minutes before they arrested the women. They betrayed not
the slightest interest in the spectators, but watched their victims
with bored attention as they waited for the patrol. . . .

The four young women were, on the following day, after the
usual court proceeding, sentenced to thirty days in the govern-
ment workhouse for " obstructing traffic."

A brief statement was made by each of the little group. " We
are not citizens," said these young women. " We are not repre-
sented. We were silently, peacefully attempting to gain the
freedom of twenty million women in the United States of
America. We have broken no law. We are guilty of no crime.
We have been illegally arrested. We demand our freedom, and
we shall continue to ask for it until the government acts."

They were given thirty days in the workhouse.

The last picketing of the Emergency War Session of the
Sixty-fifth Congress took place on October 6, the day Con-
gress adjourned. There were eleven women in this picket
line: Dr. Caroline Spencer, Vivian Pierce, Louise Lewis

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 24-6

Kahle, Rose Winslow, Joy Young, Matilda Young, Minnie
Henesy, Kate Heffelfinger, Maud Jamison, Lou C. Daniels.

Alice Paul led them. Congress was adjourning. The
work of the Woman's Party was going on smoothly. For
the first time, Alice Paul felt that she had the leisure to go
to jail.

In the Suffragist of October 13, Pauline Jacobson of the
Scm Francisco Bulletm thus describes their arrest :

I had had much of the Western prejudice against the " militant
movement " that the live Sa£frage battle had become in this
country. I had thought from the newspaper reports that have
gone forth concerning the action of these " militant Suffragists,"
that " picketing " was rowdy and unlovely. I found it a silent,
a still thing — a thing sublime. ...

The sun, which never seems bright to me under these paler
Eastern skies, slanted chill and thin through the falling golden
foliage of autumn trees lining the broad avenue on which the
White House stands. Diagonally across, flying the Suffrage
colors, stands the handsome old Cameron House, the Head-
quarters of the Woman's Party.

Suddenly that chill avenue vista became vibrant with color,
with fluttering banners, wide-striped of purple, white, and gold,
borne aloft on tall, imposing, war-like spears. Down the
Avenue they fluttered slowly, as if moved by some mysterious
force. Then I saw the force that was sending those banners
forward through the careless crowds.

There were eleven women, each bearing high her colored
banner. The leader, a woman frail, and slight, and very paley
her eyes and face really lit with exaltation of purpose, carried
a white flag on which was printed : " Mr. President, what will
you do for Woman Suffrage ? " Then behind them followed the
others with the vivid purple and gold flags on the spear-headed
staffs. They looked neither to the right nor to the left. They
seemed to me to walk so lightly that the great banners carried
them; and there was the glow in all of their eyes though their
faces were quite unsmiling.

The street in an instant had become alive with people who
gathered about, followed, or lined the curbs, men and women —
the women for the most part curious, the men for the most part
disdainful, insolent, or leering. It was not a Western crowd;
there was no generosity in it.

But silently, perceived by all but perceiving none, the women

246 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

marched straight ahead. As they neared the White House a
sailor sprang forward and tore the banner from one picket,
threw it on the ground, and trampled on it. The young girl
who had carried it stooped down and silently rescued her banner.
I thought there was tenderness in the way she smoothed it out
and tried to fasten it again to her tall staff. Four banners were
torn and mutilated like that. Each girl, without a word, like the
first, tried to protect her flag.

And then, like a flash, those eleven women, a few feet apart,
were flanking either side of the wide White House gates like
living statues, only their colored banners fluttering upward.
They stood facing the coming and going crowd silently. There
was the pale little leader with her staff bare ; the crowd had torn
away that simple question on the white flag. ...

Then came shouted orders, the sudden waving of blue-coated
arms, and the elbowing to the front of blue coats with much gold
braid. The police were scattering the curious crowd. Above
their orders came the clang of the patrol. Next the eleven
statues had disappeared from the White House gates. They were
being crowded to the front by the fat officer in the uniform.
They were still silent and still proud. There was something
majestic even in the way each stooped her head to eiiter the
small door of the patrol wagon. And the last uniformed officer
who had gathered together the brilliant flags sat in front, where
they still fluttered triumphant in the wind as the patrol clanged
off and the crowd shouted.

I followed them to the police station. It seemed to me there
was strange delay in the procedure of accepting bail for people
charged with so simple an offense — for they were charged with
" obstructing traffic." That same day, I had seen dense crowds
watching the World Series returns, with mounted police to clear
a space for the cars. There were no arrests for blocking traffic.
They were finally released on bail for trial the following Monday.

The eleven women were tried on October 8. They refused
to recognize the Court. They would not be sworn. They
would not question witnesses. They would not speak in their
own behalf.

Alice Paul said — I quote the Suffragist:

We do not wish to make any plea before this Court. We do
not consider ourselves subject to this Court since, as an unen-
franchised class, we have nothing to do with the making of the
laws which have put us in this position.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 247

The Judge did not sentence the eleven women. He sus-
pended sentence and restored the bail furnished by the Suf-
fragists for their appearance. For this surprising change
of front, no reason was given. Though apparently incon-
sistent, it was perfectly consistent with the policy of an
Administration quite dazed and uncertain in regard to its
treatment of the picketing women.

In point of fact, the Court did not sentence the women
because Congress was adjourning. They did not dismiss the
charge, however.

Regarding the freeing of the pickets Miss Paul said:

We are glad that the authorities have retreated at last from
their untenable position, and grown wary of prosecuting women
for peacefully petitioning for political liberty.

The action of the Court this morning makes more glaring than
ever the injustice of holding nineteen women on sixty and thirty
day sentences in Occoquan Workhouse for the same offense of
petitioning for liberty which we committed. We will use our
unexpected freedom to press our campaign with ever-increasing
vigor.

On October 15, four pickets, under suspended sentence
from their picketing of October 6, went out again. They
were Rose Winslow, Kate Heffelfinger, Minnie Henesy, Maud
Jamison. The police were taken absolutely by surprise. It
was ten minutes before the patrol wagons appeared. In the
meantime, of course, a crowd gathered to see what was going
to happen. When the patrol stopped at the curb, an officer
approached the pickets. " Move on ! " he ordered, and, be-
fore the pickets could move on, or even make a reply — " I
will put you under arrest," and immediately, " You are under
arrest." Rose Winslow, one of the pickets, lifted her ban-
ner high, and marched with the air of a conqueror to the
waiting patrol. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.

In court Rose Winslow said:

We have seen officers of the law permit men to assault women,
to destroy their banners, to enter their residences. How, then,
can you ask us to have respect for the law? We thought that

248 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

by dismissing ihe Su£Eragists without sentence this Court bad
finally decided to recognize our legal right to petition the govern-
ment. We shall continue to picket because it- is our right. On
the tenth of November there will be a long line of Suffragists
who will march to the White House gates to ask for political
liberty. You can send us to jail, but you know that we have
broken no law. You know that we have not even committed the
technical offense on which we were arrested. You know that we
are guiltless.

Judge Mullowny gave them the choice between a twenty-
five dollar fine and six months in the district workhouse.
They, of course, refused to pay the fine.

At half-past four on October 20, Alice Paul led a depu-
tation of three pickets to the West gate of the White House.
The others were Dr. Caroline Spencer, Gladys Greiner, Grer-
trude Crocker. Alice Paul carried a banner with the words
of President Wilson which had appeared recently on the
posters for the Second Liberty Bond Loan of 1917 :

THE TIME HAS COME TO CONaiTER OR SUBMIT. FOE US THEEE
CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.

Dr. Caroline Spencer's banner bote the watchword of '76:

KESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.

They were arrested as soon as the police had permitted
what seemed a sufficient crowd to gather, placed in the patrol
wagon, and taken to the district jail.

The officer testified as follows — ^the italics are my own:

I made my way through the crowd that was surrounding them,
and told the ladies they were violating the law by Handing at
the gates, and would not they please move on.

Assistant District Attorney Hart asked: Did they move on?

Lee answered: They did not, and they did not answer either.

Hart: What did you do then?

Lee: Placed them under arrest.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 249

The two women who carried the banners — ^Alice Paul and
Caroline Spencer — were sentenced to seven months in jail;
the other two pickets were offered the choice of a five dollar
fine or thirty days, and, of course, took the thirty days.

On the same occasion, Rose Winslow and those who were
arrested with her, Maud Jamison, Kate Heffelfinger,
Minnie Henesy — both on October 4 and October 15 — came
up for further sentence. Rose Winslow described very
vigorously the confusion of the Suffragists who, she ad-
mitted, were not more nonplussed than Judge MuUoWny
admitted the Court was. She said:

You sentence us to jail for a few days, then you sentence us
to the workhouse for thirty days, then sixty, and then you sus-
pend sentence. Sometimes we are accused of carrying seditious
banners, then of obstructing traffic. How do you expect us to
see any consistency in the law, or in your sentences?

The Court smiled, and pronounced an additional thirty
days, saying : " First, you will serve six months, and then
you will serve one month more."

Alice Paul had been in jail ever since October 20. When
the news first got out, women came from all over the country
to join the picket forces. It was decided that on November
10, forty-one women should go out^on the picket line as a
protest against her imprisonment. But on the night of No-
vember 9, these forty-one women — accompanied by sympa-
thizers and friends — went down to the jail where their leader
was confined. Headquarters had heard from Alice Paul from
time to time, and Alice Paul had heard from Headquarters —
by means of a cleaning-woman in the jail. In her Jailed for
Freedom^ Doris Stevens tells how she went down to the jail
and talked to Alice Paul from the yard. Catherine Flanagan
and Mrs. Sophie Meredith had communicated with her in
this same manner. And once Vida MilhoUand came and sang
under her window. But this was the first time that a depu-
tation visited their imprisoned leader.

250 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

The house in which Warden Zinkham lived was close to
the wing in which Alice Paul was imprisoned. The leader of
the delegation, Katherjne Morey, accompanied by Catherine
Flanagan, went to Zinkham's door and rang the bell; asked
to see him. They were told that he was ill and could not
be seen. Immediately, the two girls gave a prearranged
signal to the silent crowd of pickets back of them. With
one accord, they ran and grouped themselves under Alice
Paul's window. Before the guards could rush upon them
and push them out of the yard, they had managed to call up
to her their names ; the large sum of money which that day
had come into the Treasury ; that forty-one of them would
protest against her imprisonment on the picket line the next
day.

The next morning, the picket line of forty-one women
marched from Headquarters in five groups. The first was
led by Mrs. John Winters Brannan.

As usual, the pickets bore golden-lettered banners. As
usual, they bore purple, white, and gold flags. As usual,
they walked slowly — always a banner's length apart. They
moved over to Pennsylvania Avenue; took up their silent
statuesque position at the East and West gates of the White
House.

The thick stream of government clerks, hastening with
home-going swiftness, paused to look at them. Involun-
tarily they applauded the women when they were arrested.
This happened almost immediately, the police hurrying the
pickets into the line of waiting patrols. Suddenly the crowd
raised a shout:

" There come some more ! "

The second picket line numbered ten women.

They also bore golden lettered banners. They also bore
flags of purple, white, and gold. They were arrested im-
mediately.

The applause continued to grow and grow in volume.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 251

Immediately a third group appeared, and after they had
been arrested, a fourth; and, on their arrest, a fifth. For
half an hour a continuous line of purple, white, and gold
blazed its revolutionary path through the grayness of the
November afternoon.

Mary A. Nolan of Florida headed the fifth group of
pickets. Little, frail, lame, seventy years old, her gallantry
elicited from the two lines of onlookers applause, cheers, calls
of encouragement.

" K)eep right on ! " one voice emerged from the noise.
" You'll make them give it to you ! "

The women of the first group were: Mrs. John Winters
Brannan, Belle Sheinberg, L. H. Hornesby, Paula Jakobi,
Cynthia Cohen, M. Tilden Burritt, Dorothy Day, Mrs.
Henry Butterworth, Cora Weeks, Peggy Baird Johns, Eliza-
beth Hamilton, Ella Guilford, Amy Juengling, Hattie
Kruger.

The women of the second group were: Agnes H. Morey,
Mrs. William Bergen, Camilla Whitcomb, Ella Findeisen,
Lou Daniels, Mrs. George Scott, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis,
Elizabeth McShane, Kathryn Lincoln.

The women of the third group were : Mrs. William Kent,
Alice Gram, Betty Gram, Mrs. R. B. Quay, Mrs. C. T.
Robertson, Eva Decker, Genevieve Williams.

The women of the fourth group were: Mrs. Charles W.
Barnes, Kate Stafford, Mrs. J. H. Short, Mrs. A. N. Beim,
Catherine Martinette.

The women of the fifth group were: Mrs. Harvey Wiley,
Alice Cosu, Mary Bartlett Dixon, Julia Emory, Mary A.
Nolan, Lucy Burns.

The forty-one women were tried on November 12. They
were charged with " obstructing traffic," and pleaded " Not
Guilty." The police sergeants and plain-clothes men gave
their testimony which was refuted absolutely by witnesses
for the defendants — Helena Hill Weed, Olivia Dunbar Tor-
rence, Marie Manning Gasch, Mary Ingham.

Mrs. John Winters Brannan said:

252 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

The responsibility for an agitation like ours against injus-
tice rests with those who deny justice, not those who demand it.
Whatever may be the verdict of this Court, we shall continue our
agitation until the grievance of American women is redressed.

Mrs. Harvey Wiley said:

I want to state that we took this action with great consecra-
tion of spirit. We took this action with willingness to sacrifice
our personal liberty in order to focus the attention of the nation
on the injustice of our disfranchisement, that we might thereby
win political liberty for all the women of the country. The
Constitution says that Congress shall not in any way abridge the
right of citizens peacefully to assembly and petition. That is
exactly what we did. We peacefully assembled and then pro-
ceeded with our petition to the President for the redress of our
grievance of disfranchisement. The Constitution does not specify
the form of petition. Ours was in the form of a banner. To
say that we " broke tra£Bc regulations " when we exercised our
constitutional right of petition is therefore unconstitutional.

Judge MuUowny admitted the embarrassment of the Ad-
ministration.

" The trouble of the situation is that the Court has not
been given power to meet it," he complained. " It is very,
very puzzling."

A little after three o'clock, he dismissed the pickets with-
out imposing sentence. He said he would take the case under
advisement.

An hour later, twenty-seven of the women who had just
been tried — Vith, in addition, Mrs. William L. Colt, Eliza-
beth Smith, Matilda Young, Hilda Blumberg — emerged from
Headquarters. They walked twice up and down in front of
the White House before they took their places at the
gates.

The police were dumbfounded by their unexpected on-
slaught. There were no patrols waiting. But they pulled
themselves together, arrested the pickets, and commandeered
cars in which to take them to the police headquarters.

The thirty-one women were ordered to appear in court
on November 14. There, after waiting all the mom-

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 258

ing, Judge MuUowny told them to come back Friday.

At Headquarters, it was believed that this was not only a
challenge to the quality of their spirit, but to the degree
of their patience.

Many women had come from a long distance to make this
protest. Not all could spare the time, money, and vitality.
Their answer to that challenge was instant and convincing.
On the afternoon of November 13, the picket line went out
again — ^thirty-one of them.

The pickets blazed their way through dense, black throngs.
The crowd was distinctly friendly.

Suddenly one of the banners disappeared; another and
another until six of them were destroyed; the bare poles
proceeded on their way however. The same person accom-
plished all this — the uniformed yeoman who dragged Alice
Paul across thirty feet of pavement on August 15. But
this time, the crowd — friendly — ^manifested its disapproval,
and the police arrested him. The pickets stood for a long
time, their line stretching from gate to gate, until they began
to think that the Administration had changed its tactics.
Then suddenly the patrol wagon gong sounded in the dis-
tance. Presently they were all arrested.

Many of the pickets had been tried the day before. As
their bail had not been refunded, they refused to give more.
They were kept that night in the house of detention. As
this institution had but two rooms with eight beds each, some
of the women slept on the floor. They were tried and sen-
tenced the next day. One of them — ^the aged Mrs Nolan —
got six days, three fifteen days, twenty-four thirty days,
two — ^Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mrs. John Winters Brannan
— sixty days, and oiie — ^Lucy Burns — six months.

It was this group of women who went through the Night
of Terror, subsequently to be described.

On November 17, three more women — ^Mrs. Harvey Wiley,
Mrs. William Kent, and Elizabeth McShane — ^were sentenced
to fifteen days on the November 10 charges.

254 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

All these prisoners except four were sent to the Occoquan
Workhouse.

Habeas corpus proceedings became necessary — owing to
conditions which will presently be set forth — and a writ was
procured; but only after numberless obstacles were sur-
mounted. The case came up in the United States District
Court at Alexandria, Virginia, with Judge Edmund Waddill
sitting. Judge Waddill ordered the prisoners transferred
to the jail on the ground that they should have been con-
fined there instead of at Occoquan Workhouse. Later the
Court of Appeals reversed this decision. In the meantime,
brought to the jail, the government was faced with the
necessity of forcibly feeding the majority of these women,
already weakened from hunger-striking.

Here, perhaps, is the place to tell of a curious incident
that happened during Alice Paul's jail term. For this to
strike the reader with the force it deserves, he must remem-
ber that Alice Paul was held almost incommunicado, that
she saw but two friends from the outside, and then only for
a few minutes, that she could not confer with her counsel,
Dudley Field Malone, who had to overcome extraordinary
obstacles — ^had finally to threaten habeas corpus proceedings
and to see high officials who were his personal friends — to
get to her. Two newspaper men were admitted, but they
were friendly to the Administration.

One evening, at nine o'clock — an hour when all the pris-
oners were supposed to be in bed — ^the door opened and a
stranger entered her room. He proved to be David
Lawrence, a newspaper man, very well known as one who
was closely associated with the Administration. He did not
say that he had come from the Administration, but, of
course. It is obvious that if he had not been in favor with
the Administration, he would not have been admitted. He
stayed two hours, and Miss Paul talked over the situation
with him.

I now quote Miss Younger, who has told this episode on
many platforms :

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 255

He asked Miss Paul how long she and the other pickets would
give the Administration before they began picketing again. She
said it would depend upon the attitude the Administration and
Congress seemed to be taking toward the Federal Amendment.
He said he believed the prohibition bill would be brought up
and passed, and after that was out of the way the Suffrage bill
would be taken up.

He asked if we would be content to have it go through one
House this session and wait till the next session for it to pass
the other House. Miss Paul said that if the bill did not go
through both Houses this session, the Woman's Party would not
be satisfied.

Then the man said he believed that the President would not
mention Suffrage in his message at the opening of Congress, but
would make it known to the leaders of Congress that he wanted
it passed and would see that it passed.

He said in effect: Now the great difficulty is for these hunger-
strikers to be recognized as political prisoners. Every day you
hunger-strike, you advertise the idea of political prisoners
throughout the country. It would be the easiest thing in the world
for the Administration to treat you as political prisoners ; to put
you in a fine house in Washington; give you the best of food;
take the best of care of you; but if we treat you as political
prisoners, we would have to treat other groups which might arise
in opposition to the war program as political prisoners too, and
that would throw a bomb in our war program. It would never
do. It would be easier to give you the Suffrage Amendment than
to treat you as political prisoners.

On November 27 and 28, a few days after Miss Paul's
strange experience — suddenly, quite arbitrarily, and with no
reason assigned — the government released all the Suffrage
prisoners.

The speakers of the Woman's Party began telling this
story of the visit to Alice Paul's cell, everywhere. It finally
appeared in the Milwaukee Leader and in the San Francisco
Bulletin in an article written by John D. Barry. The Na-
tional Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage immedi-
ately questioned the truth of this episode.

Congress reconvened on December 3. The President, true
to David Lawrence's prophecy, did not mention Suffrage in
his message to Congress. However, on January 9, 1918, on

256 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

the evening of, the victorious vote in the House — as will
subsequently and in more detail again be told — the President
declared for the Federal Amendment.

Minnie Bronson, the General Secretary of the National
Association Opposed to Woman Suifrage, immediately sent
Alice Paul a letter of apology for questioning the truth of
her statement. In that letter, she repeats Maud Younger's
statement in regard to this visit to Alice Paul in prison,
and says:

The inference contained in this article that the President of
the United States would under cover assist a proposition which
he had publicly and unqualifiedly repudiated, seemed to us un-
worthy of his high office, and we felt justified in defending him
from what seemed an unwarranted and unbelievable accusation.

However, the President's subsequent public suppy>rt of the Fed-
eral Suffrage Amendment, his announcement coming on the eve of
the vote in the House of Representatives, indicates the truth of
your original assertion, and we therefore deem it incumbent
upon ourselves to apologize for having questionofl Miss Younger's
statement. [

We are sending a copy of this letter to tjje President and
members of Congress. ""

Very truly yours,

Minnie Bronson.

Perha,ps a word should be said of description — and even
of explanation — in regard to the crowds who harried the
Suffragists. Of course, in all crowds there is a hoodlum
element, and if that element is not held down by the police,
it rapidly becomes the controlling power; tends to become
more and more destructive. The police, as has been indi-
cated from time to time, adopted various policies. At first,
they maintained order. Then they began to permit the
rowdy element in the crowds to do as it pleased. Later, they
even worked with these destructive forces.

Men were heard to say, one to another, " Stick around
here. Something's going to happen this afternoon. I saw
it this morning." To them, of course, it was merely an
entertaining exhibition.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D C

Obeying Okders.

Washington Police Aheesting White House Pickets Bepoke

THE Treasury Building.

1 ■.- •■ \ui^^^ . —. — - — ■:-T::?w!7m9m-

^— , s-

* ""jW ~"

Pnoto Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

The Patrol Wagon Waiting the Arrival of the
Suffrage Pickets.

THE WAR ON THE PICKETS 257

An enlisting sergeant used often to make his way through
the crowds saying, " Now you have shown your spirit, boys,
come and enlist ! "

At all times, however, the people who annoyed, and later
ill-treated the girls, were very young men — often in uniform.
After a while there appeared men in , plain clothes with
groups of men in khaki, or yeomen, who were obviously in
the crowd for the purpose of making trouble for the Suf-
fragists. These people did not like cameras, and the
moving picture people who, appreciating the news value of
the situation, tried to get views of the crowd, did so at the
risk of having their cameras smashed. Indeed, Helena HiU
Weed once dispersed a crowd by pointing a camera at them.
This was the worst element the pickets had to deal with —
unthinking young men of a semi-brutalized type. Of course,
boys took their cue from their elders, and snatched or
destroyed banners where they could. After a demonstration,
you would come across groups of them, marching with the
tattered banners that they had managed to steal.

" When is the shooting going to begin? " one little boy
was heard to ask once.

In the very midst of the riots, one would come across older
men cutting up banners into small pieces which they gave
away as souvenirs.

Of course, there were chivalrous spirits who protested
against the treatment of the pickets by the police — ^protested
even after they wer^ threatened with arrest. Some of them
were actually arrested, and one of them fined.

Often — ^very often indeed — the waiting crowds broke into
spontaneous applause when group after group marched
from Headquarters into the certainty of arrest. Those who
were Anglo-Saxons inevitably admired the sporting quality
of these women.

Perhaps a negro street sweeper summed it up better than
anybody else. , He said : " I doan know what them women
want, but I know they ain't skeered! "

The reader is probably asking by this time what was the

268 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

effect of the picketing on the Woman's Party itself. The
first reaction was exactly what he would guess — that mem-
bers resigned in large numbers. The second, however, was
one which he might not expect — that new members joined in
large numbers. In other words, the militant action which
alienated some women brought others into the organization;
women who were aroused by the simple and immediate de-
mands of the Woman's Party and by the courage and the
forthrightness with which it pushed those demands; women
who had become impatient at the impasse to which the older
generation of Suffrage workers had brought the Suffrage
Amendment. The majority of the people who deserted came
back later.

As far as money was concerned, the effect was magical.
In some months during the picketing the receipts were
double what they had been the corresponding months of the
previous year when there had been no picketing. Once those
receipts jumped as high as six times the 'normal amount.
This was what happened in England during the militant
period.

4. The Court and the Pickets

" So long as you send women to /prison for asking for justice,
so long will women be ready to go in such a cause."

Anne Martin to the judge before whom she was tried.

After Judge Waddill's decision that the commitment of the
pickets to Occoquan was illegal, the pickets filed sixteen suits .
for damage. Eight of these were against Whittaker, Super-
intendent of the Workhouse at Occoquan, and his assistant,
Captain Reams, on account of their brutal treatment of the
women while at Occoquan Workhouse. They were filed in
the United States Court for the Western District of Vir-
ginia at Richmond. The other eight were against the Com-
missioners of the District of Columbia and Superintendent
Zinkham of the District Jail for the unlawful transfer of the
pickets to the institution of Whittaker at Occoquan. These
suits were filed in the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia at Washington.

The appeals in the cases of two groups of women arrested
August 23 and 28 came up in the District of Columbia
Court of Appeals on January 8, 1918, before Chief Justice
Smyth, and Justices Robb and Van Orsdel. Matthew
O'Brien, of Washington, and Dudley Field Malone, of New
York, appeared for the Suffragists. Corporation Counsel
Stevens conducted the case for the government.

" Suppose," suggested Justice Robb, " some upholders of Billy
Sunday should go out on the streets with banners on which were
painted some of Billy's catch phrases, and should stand with
their backs to the fence, and a curious crowd gathered, some of
whom created disorder and threw stones at the, carriers of the
banners. Who should be arrested, those who created the dis-
order, or the banner carriers .'' "

Mr. Stevens gave it as his opinion that both parties should be
arrested.

2S9

260 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

" Did I makp myself clear that the banner carriers were per-
fectly peaceful ? " Justice Bobb asked.

" When it is commonly known there is a forty-foot sidewalk
there? " Justice Van Orsdel reinforced him.

" Well, then," observed Attorney O'Brien, when he answered
Mr. Stevens in his argument, " the honorable Justices obstruct
traffic, according to learned counsel's definition, when court ad-
journs, and they walk down the street together."

On March 4, Judge Van Orsdel handed down the opinion,
which was concurred in by the other two judges of the
court, that in the case of those pickets who appealed, no
information had been filed justifying their arrest and sen-
tence. Since the offense of every other picket who was
arrested was identical with that of these twelve who appealed
their case, they were all illegally arrested, illegally convicted
and illegally imprisoned. The Appellate Court thus reversed
the decision of the District Police Court. In addition, it
ordered the cases dismissed. All of the costs involved iii
the cases, it was decided, should be paid by the Court of
the District of Columbia, for which an appropriation would
have to be made by Congressional enactment.

Later, the case of Mrs. Harvey Wiley came up. It will
be remembered that Mrs. Wiley was one of the forty-three
women who picketed the President on November in the last
picket line demonstration. She was sentenced to serve fifteen
days in the District Jail. Dr. Wiley, her husband, appealed
her case. Early in April the Court decided that there was
no information filed justifying her arrest. So that she also
was illegally arrested, illegally convicted, and illegally im-
prisoned.

Yet in spite of the brutalities to which the Courts sen-
tenced the pickets, unconsciously they furthered the Suf-
frage cause. The women turned the Court sessions into Suf-
frage meetings. In defending their case at one of the early
trials, the pickets, each taking up the story where the other
left it, told the entire history of the Suffrage movement.
Crowds thronged the Court. People attended these trials
who had never been to a Suffrage meeting in their lives.

5. The Strange Ladies

THE EMPTY CUP

Evening at Occoquan. Rain pelts the workhouse roof.
The prison matrons are sewing together for the Red Cross.
The women prisoners are going to bed in two long rows.
Some of the Suffrage pickets lie reading in the dim light.
Through the dark, above the rain, rings out a cry.

We listen at the windows. (Oh, those cries from punishment

ceUs!)
A voice calls one of us by name.
" Miss Burns ! Miss Burns ! Will you see that I have a drink

of water ? "
Lucy Burns arises; slips on the coarse blue prison gown.
Over it her swinging hair, red-gold, throws a regal mantle.

She begs the night-watch to give the girl water.

One of the matrons leaves her war-bandages; we see her hasten

to the cell.
The light in it goes out.
The voice despairing cries:

" She has taken away the cup and she will not bring me water."
Rain pours on the roof. The Suffragists lie awake.
The matrons work busily for the Red Cross.

Xatherine Rolstok Fisheh,

The Suffragist, October 17, 1917.

WOMAN'S PARTY SONG

Composed in Prison by the Suffrage Pickets

SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN

Tune (Scotch) :
" Charlie Is My Darling."

Shout the Revolution

Of Women, of Women,
Shout the Revolution

Of Liberty.
261

262 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

Rise, glorious women of the earth,

The voiceless and the free.
United strength assures the birth

Of True Democracy.
Invincible our army.

Forward, forward.
Strong in faith we're marching

To Victory.

Shout the Revolution

Of Women, of Women,
Shout the Revolution

Of Liberty.
Men's reyolutions born in blood

But our's conceived in peace
We hold a banner for a sword,

'Til all oppression cease.
Prison, death defying,

Onward, onward.
Triumphant daughters marching

To Victory.

The preceding two chapters have been concerned mainly
with the treatment of the pickets at the hands of the law.
We now approach a much graver matter — their treatment
at the hands of the prison authorities. This chapter de-
scribes what is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the
history of the United States. It is futile to argue that what
happened in the District Jail and at Occoquan Workhouse,
and later at the abandoned Workhouse, was unknown to the
Administration. The Suffragists, indeed, published it to the
entire country. That the treatment to which the pickets
were subjected was the result of orders from above is almost
demonstrable. It must be remembered that the officials who
are responsible for what happened to the pickets — the three
Commissioners who govern the District of Columbia, the
police court judges, the Chief of Police, the warden of the
jail, the superintendent of Occoquan Workhouse, are directly
or indirectly answerable to the President.

When the first pickets came out of prison (arrested on
June 27, 1917), their spirit was that of women who have

THE STRANGE LADIES 268

willingly gone to jail for a cause — and was in consequence
entirely without self-pity.

In a speech at a breakfast tendered them in the garden at
Headquarters, Mabel Vernon sounded this note :

I do not want any one here to think we have been martyrs
because of this jail experience we have had. There was no great
hardship connected with it. It was a very simple thing to do —
to be imprisoned for three days, really two nights and a day.
Do not think we have gone through any great sacrifices.

But I do not feel patient about this experience. I do not want
to go back to jail, and I do not want others to go, became it
should not he necessary. ,

The jail in which the women were first imprisoned was the
conventional big white-washed octagonal building with wings
at both sides. This was as filthy then as any place could be.
The bathroom, with its shower was a damp, dank, dark place.
The jail was filled with vermin and rats. Julia Emory said
that, in the night, prisoners could actually hear the light
cell chairs being moved, so big and strong were the rats.
The prisoners complained so constantly that finally the
prison officials put poison about; but this did not decrease
them. Then they brought a dog, but the dog was apparently
afraid of the rats. The girls used to hear the matrons telling
visitors that they had got rid of the rats by means of this
dog. One night, Julia Emory beat three rats in succession
off her bed. Alice Paul says that among her group of jailed
pickets was one whose shrieks nightly filled the jail as the
rats entered her cell.

On July 17, however, when the sixteen women charged with
obstructing traffic went to Occoquan Workhouse, things
got much worse. Occoquan is charmingly situated, and,
judged superficially, seems a model institution. It consists
of a group of white buildings placed in a picturesque com-
bination of cultivated fields with distant hills. All about lie
the pleasant indications of rural life — crops; cows grazing;
agricultural implements ; even flower gardens. The District

264 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

Jail cannot compare with it for charm of situation. It has
not even a pretense of the meretricious effect of cleanliness
which Occoquan shows. Nevertheless, no picket who went to
Occoquan emerged without a sinister sense of the horror of
the place. Lucy Burns, of whom it may almost be said that
she knows no fear, confesses that at Occoquan she suffered
with nameless and inexplicable terrors. This evidence is all
the more strange because, I reiterate, Occoquan has an effect
of cleanliness, of open air, of comfort ; almost of charm. One
reason for this sinister atmosphere was that no question the
pickets put was ever answered directly. If they asked to see
Superintendent Whittaker, he was always out — ^they could
see him tomorrow. If they made a request, it would be
granted to them in two days, or next week. The women's
ward was a long, clean, sunny, airy room with two rows of
beds — ^like a hospital ward. Here they put colored pris-
oners to sleep in the same room with the Suffragists. More-
over, they set the Suffragists to paint the lavatories used by
the colored women. The matron who handled the bedclothes
was compelled to wear rubber gloves, but the Suffragists
were permitted no such luxury — even in painting the lava-
tories. Indeed, often they slept in beds in which the blankets
had not been changed or cleaned since the last occupant.
It seemed a part of their premeditated system in the treat-
ment of the Suffragists that they made them all undress
in the same bathroom, and, without any privacy, take
shower baths one after another.

The punishment cells, of which later we shall hear in refer-
ence to the Night of Terror, were in another building. These
were tiny brick rooms with tiny windows, very high up.

A young relative of one of the jail ofRcials, in the uniform
of an officer of the United States Army, used to come into
this building at night, and look in through the undraped
grating of these cells. Once he unlocked the door, and came
into a room where two young pickets were sleeping. " Are
you a physician? " one of them had the presence of mind to
ask.

THE STRANGE LADIES 266

He answered that he was not. She lay down, and covered
her head with the bedclothes. Presently he left.

There were open toilets in all these cells, and they could
only be flushed from the outside. It was necessary always
to call a man guard to do this. They came, or not, as they
pleased.

In the Suffragist of July 28, 1917, occurs the first ac-
count of Occoquan, by Mrs. Gilson Gardner. Mrs. Gardner,
it will be remembered, was one of that early group of sixteen
pickets whom the President pardoned after three days.

She says:

The short journey on the train was pleasant and uneventful.
From the station at Occoquan the women sent to the Work-
house were put into three conveyances; two were filled with
white women and the third with colored women. In the office
of the Workhouse we stood in a line and one at a time were
registered and given a number.' The matron called us by number
and first name to the desk. Money and jewelry were accounted
for and put in the safe. We were then sent to the dining-room.
The meal of soup, rye bread, and water was not palatable. . . .

From the dining-room we were taken to the dormitory. At
one end of the long room, a white woman and two colored women
were waiting for us. Before these women we were obliged,
one by one, to remove all our clothing, and after taking a shower
bath, put on the Workhouse clothes. These clothes consisted of
heavy unbleached muslin chemises and drawers, a petticoat made
of ticking, and a heavy dark gray cotton mother hubbard dress.
The last touch was a full, heavy, dark blue apron which tied
around the waist. The stockings were thick and clumsy. There
were not enough stockings, and those of us who did not have
stockings during our sojourning there were probably rather for-
tunate. We were told to wear our own shoes for the time being,
as they did not have enough in stock. The one small rough towel
that was given to us we were told must be folded and tucked
into our aprons. The prisoners were permitted to have only
what they could carry.

The dormitory was clean and cool and we longed to go to bed,
but we were told we must dress and go into the adjoining room
where Superintendent Whittaker would see us. Mr. Whittaker
brought with him a man whom we afterward learned was a news-
paper man. The superintendent informed us that for about an

266 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

hour we could do as we chose, and pointing to the piano said
that we might play and sing. The piano was not unlocked while
we were there, but that night no one had a desire to sing. Al-
though Mr. WMttaker's words were few and not unpleasant, we
realized that our presence did not cause him either embarrass-
ment or regret.

We were told that one dormitory was given up to colored
women; in the other one, the one in which we were to sleep,
there would be both colored and white women. We had asked
to be allowed to have our toilet things and were told we could
not have them until the next morning, that is, we would be per-
mitted to have our combs and toothbrushes then. But we were
not permitted to have these until Thursday. One woman told
us we must not lend our comb to other prisoners and must not
mingle with the colored women. . . .

The days were spent in the sewing-room. We were permitted
to talk in low tones, two or three being allowed to sit together.
While we were there, the sewing was very light. We turned hems
on sheets and pillow slips and sewed on the machine. There
were both white and colored women working in the sewing-
room. The work was monotonous and our clothing extremely
heavy.

The great nervous strain came at meal time. All the women
ate in one big room. The white women sat at one side. The
meal lasted thirty and sometimes forty minutes. The food to
us was not palatable, but we all tried to be sensible and eat
enough to keep up our strength. The real problein, however, was
not the food; it was the enforced silence. We were not allowed
to speak in the dining-room, and after a conscientious effort to
eat, the silent waiting was curiously unpleasant. . . .

The use of the pencil is forbidden at all times. Each inmate
is permitted to write but two letters a month, one to her family
and one business letter. All mail received and sent is opened
and read by one of the officials. Next to our longing for our
own toilet articles was our desire for a pencil and a scrap of
paper. Another rule which makes life in the Workhouse more
difficult than life in the jail is that the Workhouse prisoners are
not permitted to receive any food sent in from outside.

We found that the other prisoners were all amazed at the
excessive sentences we had received. Old offenders, they told us,
received only thirty days.

In the Suffragist of August 11, Doris Stevens, who was a
member of the same group says :

THE STRANGE LADIES 267

No woman there will ever forget the shock and the hot resent-
ment that rushed over her when she was told to undress before
the entire company, including two negress attendants and a
harsh-voiced wardress, who kept telling us that it was " after
hours," and they " had worked too long already today," as if it
were our fault that we were there. We silenced our impulse to
resist this indignity, which grew more poignant as each woman
nakedly walked across the great vacant space to the doorless
shower. . . .

" We knew something was goin' to happen/' said one negro
girl, " because Monday," (we were not sentenced until Tuesday)
" the clo'es we had on were took off us and we were given these
old patched ones. We was told' they wanted to take stock, but
we heard they were being washed for you-all Suffragists."

It will be remembered that this was that early group of
pickets whom the President pardoned after the appeals of
J. A. H. Hopkins, Dudley Field Malone, and Gilson Ga;*dner.
Before leaving they were taken to Superintendent Whittaker.

Asking for the attention of Miss Burns and the rest of
them, he said:

"Now that you are going, I have something to say to you."
And turning to Miss Burns, he continued, " And I want to say it
to you. The next lot of women who come here won't he treated
with the same consideration that these women were,"

Mrs. Virginia Bovee, an officer of Occoquan Workhouse,
was discharged in September. At that time Lucy Bums
filed charges with Commissioner Brownlow of the District
of Columbia concerning conditions in the Workhouse. Evi-
dence is submitted on Whittaker's brutal treatment of other
prisoners, but our concern must be with his treatment of
the Suffragists.

Lucy Burns says in that complaint :

The hygienic conditions have been improved at Occoquan since
a group of Suffragists were imprisoned there. But they are still
bad. The water they drink is kept in an open pail, from which
it is ladled into a drinking cup. The prisoners frequently dip
the drinking cup directly into the pail.

The same piece of soap is used for every prisoner. As the

268 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

prisoners in Occoquan are sometimes afflicted with disease, tkis
practice is appallingly negligent.

Mrs. Bovee's affidavit reads in part :

The blankets now being used in the prison have been in use
since December without being washed or cleaned. Blankets are
washed once a year. Officers are warned not to touch any of the
bedding. The one officer who has to handle it is compelled by
the regulations to wear rubber gloves while she does so. The
sheets for the ordinary prisoners are not changed completely,
even when one has gone and another takes her bed. Instead,
the top sheet is put on the bottom, and one fresh sheet given
them. I was not there when these Suffragists arrived, so I do
not know how their bedding was arranged. I doubt whether the
authorities would have dared to give them one soiled sheet.
^The prisoners with diseases are not always isolated, by any
means. In the colored dormitory there are now two women in
advanced stages of consumption. Women suffering from syphilis,
who have open sores, are put in the hospital. But those whose
sores are temporarily healed are put inHihe same dormitory with
the others. There have been several such in my dormitory.

When the prisoners come, they must undress and take a
shower bath. Tor this they take a piece of soap from a bucket
in the storeroom. When they have finished, they throw the
soap back in the bucket. The Suffragists are permitted three
showers a week, and have only these pieces of soap which are
common to all inmates. There is no soap at all in the washrooms.

The beans, hominy, rice, corfa meal (which is exceedingly
coarse, like chicken feed), and cereal have all had worms in them.
Sometimes the worms float on top of the soup. Often they are
found in the corn bread. The first Suffragists sent the worms to
Whittaker on a spoon. On the farm is a fine herd of Holsteins.
The cream is made into butter, and sold to the tuberculosis
hospital in Washington. At the officers' table, we have very good
milk. The prisoners do not have any butter, or sugar, and no
milk except by order of the doctor.

As time went on and great numbers of pickets were ar-
rested, more and more indignities were put on them. They
were, in every sense, political prisoners, and were entitled to
the privileges of political prisoners. In all' countries dis-
tinction is made in the treatment of political prisoners. Of

THE STRANGE LADIES 269

course, the hope of the Administration was that these de-
grading conditions would discourage the picketing, and, of
course, the results were^ — as has happened in the fight for
liberty during the whole history of mankind — ^that more and
more women came forward and offered themselves.

In the Suffragist for October 13, 1917 ("From the Log
of a Suffrage Picket "), Katherine Rolston Fisher writes the
following :

Upon entering Occoquan Workhouse, we were separated from
the preceding group of Suffragists. Efforts were made by the
ofllcers to impress us by their good will towards us. Entirely
new clothing, comfortable rooms in the hospital, and the sub-
stitution of milk and buttered toast for cold bread, cereal, and
soup, ameliorated the trials of the table. The head matron was
chatty and confidential. She told us of the wonderful work of
the superintendent in creating these institutions out of the wilder-
ness and of the kindness shown by the officers to inmates. She
lamented that some of the other Suffragists did not appreciate
what was done for them. . . .

" Wliy are we segregated from all the white prisoners ? " I
asked the superintendent of the Workhouse. Part of the time
We were not segregated frftm the colored prisoners, a group of
whom were moved into the^hospital and shared with us the one
bathroom and toilet. " That is for your good and for ours," was
the bland reply. . . .

That was quite in the tone of his answer to another inquiry
made when the superintendent told me that no prisoner under
punishment — that is, in solitary confinement — was allowed to see
counsel. "Is that the law of the District of Columbia.^" I
inquired. " It is the law here because it is the rule I make," he
replied.

We learned what it is to live under a one-man law. The
doctor's orders for our milk and toast and even our medicine were
countermanded by the superintendent, so we were told. Our
counsel after one visit was forbidden, upon a pretext, to come
again.

On Tuesday, September 18, we were made to exchange our
new gingham uniforms for old spotted gray gowns covered with
patches upon patches ; were taken to a shed to get pails of paint
and brushes, and were set to painting the dormitory lavatories
and toilets. By this time we were all hungry and more or less
weak from lack of food. A large brush wet with white paint

270 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

weighs at least tfro pounds. Much of the work required our
standing on a table or stepladder and reaching above our heads.
I think the wiser of us rested at every opportunity, but we did
not refuse to work.

All this time we had been without counsel for eight days. . . .

The food, which had been a little better, about the middle of
the month reached its zenith of rancidity and putridity. We
tried to make a sport of the worm hunt, each table announcing
its score of weevils and worms. When one prisoner reached the
score of fifteen worms during one meal, it spoiled our zest for
the game. . . .

We had protested from the beginning against doing any
manual labor upon such bad and scanty food as we re-
ceived. . . .

Mrs. Kendall, who was the most emphatic in her refusal, was
promptly locked up on bread and water. The punishment makes
a story to be told by itself. It clouded our days constantly while
it lasted and while we knew not half of what she suffered. . . .

All this time — five days — Mrs. Kendall was locked up, her
pallid face visible through the windows to those few Suffragists
who had opportunity and ventured to go to her window for a
moment at the risk of sharing her fate.

Ada Davenport Kendall's story runs as foUows:

For stating that she was too weak from lack of food to scrub
a floor and that the matron's reply that there was no other work
was " hypocritical," Mrs. Kendall was confined in a separate
room for four days for profanity. She was refused the clean
clothing she should have on the day of her confinement, and was
therefore forced to wear the same clothing for eleven days. She
was refused a nightdress, or clean linen for the bed in the room.
The linen on her bed was soiled from the last occupant and
Mrs. Kendall lay on top of it all. The only toilet accommodation
consisted of an open pail. Mrs. Kendall was allowed no water
for toilet purposes during the four days, and was given three
thin slices of bread and three cups of water a day. The water
was contained in a small paper cup, and on several occasions it
seeped through.

Friends of Mrs. Kendall's obtained permission to see her.
She was then given clean clothing, and taken from the room
in which she was in solitary confinement. When the door
opened upon her visitors, she fainted.

THE STRANGE LADIES 271

Aroused by an inspection of samples of food smuggled out
to him by Suffrage prisoners, Dr, Harvey Wiley, the food
expert, requested the Board of Charities to permit him to
make an investigation of the food. " A Diet of Worms won
one revolution, and I expect it will win another," promul-
gated Dr. Wiley.

The most atrocious experience of the pickets at Occoquan
was, however, on the night known to them generally as The
Night of Terror. This happened to that group of Suffra-
gists who were arrested on November 14, sentenced to Oc-
coquan, and who immediately went on hungeir-strike as a
protest against not being treated as political prisoners and
as the last protest they could make against their imprison-
ment. Whittaker was away when they arrived, and they
were kept in the ofSce which was in the front room of one
of the small cottages. Out of these groups there always
evolved a leader. If the group included the suave and deter-
mined Lucy Burns, she inevitably took command. If it in-
cluded Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, equally velvet-voiced and im-
movable, she inevitably became spokesman. This group
included both. The Suffragists were then still making their
demand to be treated as political prisoners, and so, when the
woman at the desk — a Mrs. Hemdon — attempted to ask the
usual questions, Mrs. Lewis, speaking for the rest, refused
to answer them, saying that she would wait and talk to
Mr. Whittaker.

" You will sit here all night then," said Mrs. Hemdon.

The women waited for hours.

Mrs. Lewis always describes what follows as a sinister re-
versal of a French tale of horror she read in her girl-
hood. In that story, people began mysteriously to dis-
appear from a group. One of them would be talking orae
instant — the next he was gone; the space where he stood
was empty. In this case, slowly, silently, and in increasing
numbers, men began to appear from outside, three and
then four.

272 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

Mrs. Herndon again tried to get the Suffragists to
register, but they made no reply.

" You had better answer up, or it will be the worse for
you," said one man.

" I will handle you so you'll be sorry you made me," said
another.

The Suffragists did not reply. Mrs. Nolan says that she
could see that Mrs. Herndon was afraid of what was going to
happen.

Suddenly the door burst open, and Whittaker came rush-
ing in from a conference, it was later discovered, of the
District of Columbia Commissioners at the White House —
followed by men — more and more of them. The Suffra^sts
had been sitting or lying on the floor. Mrs. Lewis stood up.

" We demand to be treated as political pris " she

began. But that was as far as she got.

" You shut up ! I have men here glad to handle you ! "
Whittaker said. " Seize her ! "

Two men seized Mrs. Lewis, dragged her out of the sight
of the remaining Suffragists.

In the meantime, another man sprang at Mrs. Nolan, who,
it will be remembered, was over seventy years old, very frail
and lame. She says :

I am used to being careful of my bad fbot, and I remember
saying: " I will come with you; do not drag me. I have a lame
foot." But I was dragged down the steps and away into the
dark. I did not have my feet on the ground. I guess that saved
me.

It was black outside, and all Mrs. Nolan remembers was
the approach to a low, dark building from which, made bril-
liantly luminous by a window light, flew the American flag.

As Mrs. Nolan entered the hall, a man in the Occoquan
uniform, brandishing a stick, called, " Damn you ! Gret in
there ! " Before she was shot through this hall, two men
brought in Dorothy Day, — a very slight, delicate girl; her
captors were twisting her arms above her head. Suddenly

■'-M --'!

THE STRANGE LADIES 273

they lifted her, brought her body down twice over the back
of an iron bench. One of the men called: "The damned
Suffrager! My mother ain't no Suffrager! I will put you
through hell ! " Then Mrs. Nolan's captors pulled her down
a corridor which opened out of this room, and pushed her
through the door.

Back of Mrs. Nolan, dragged along in the same way, came
Mrs. Cosu, who, with that extraordinary thoughtfulness and
tenderness which the pickets all developed for each other,
called to Mrs. Nolan : " Be careful of your foot ! "

The bed broke Mrs. Nolan's fall, but Mrs. Cosu hit the
wall. They had been there but a few minutes when Mrs.
Lewis, all doubled over like a sack of flour, was thrown in.
Her head struck the iron bed, and she fell to the floor sense-
less.

The other women thought she was dead. They wept
over her.

Ultimately, they revived Mrs. Lewis, but Mrs. Cosu was
desperately ill all night, with a heart attack and vomiting.
They were afraid that she was dying, and they called at
intervals for a doctor, but although there was a woman and
a man guard in the corridor, they paid no attention. There
were two mattresses and two blankets for the three, but that
was not enough, and they shivered all night long.

In the meantime, I now quote from Paula Jakobi's account.
We go back to that moment in the detention room when they
seized Mrs. Lewis.

" And seize her ! " rang in my ears, and Whittaker had me by
the arm. " And her ! " he said, indicating Dorothy Day. Miss
Day resisted. Her arm was through the handle of my bag.
Two men pulled her in one direction, while two men pulled me
in the opposite direction. There was a horrible mix-up. Finally,
the string of the bag broke. Two men dragged her from the
room. I saw it was useless to resist. The man at the right of
me left me, and tightly grasped in the clutches of the man at my
left, I was led to a distant building.

When Julia Emory, who was rushed along just after Mrs.
Jakobi, entered the building, the two guards were smashing

274 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

Dorothy Day's back over the back of a chair ; she was crying
to Paula Jakobi for help ; and Mrs. Jakobi, struggling with
the other two guards, was trying to get to her. They placed
Julia Emory in a cell opposite Lucy Bums.

Of the scene in the reception room of the Workhouse,
Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who saw all this from a coign
of vantage which apparently surveyed the whole I'oom, says :

I firmly believe that, no matter how we behaved, Whittaker
had determined to attack us as part of the government plan to
suppress picketing. ... Its (the attack's) perfectly unex-
pected ferocity stunned us. I saw two men seize Mrs. Lewis,
lift her from her feet, and catapult her through the doorway.
I saw three men take Miss Burns, twisting her arms behind her,
and then two other men grasp her shoulders. There were six to
ten guards in the room, and many others collected on the porch —
forty to fifty in all. These all rushed in with Whittaker when
he first entered.

Instantly the room was in havoc. The guards brought from
the male prison fell upon us. I saw Miss Lincoln, a slight
young girl, thrown to the floor. Mrs. Nolan, a delicate old lady
of seventy-three, was mastered by two men. The furniture was
overturned, and the room was a scene of havoc.

Whittaker in the center of the yoom directed the whole attack,
inciting the guards to every brutality.

The whole group of women were thrown, dragged, and hurled
out of the office, down the steps, and across the road and field
to the Administration Building, where another group of bullies
was waiting for us. The assistant superintendent. Captain
Reams, was one of these, armed with a stick which he flourished
at us, as did another man. The women were thrown roughly
down on benches.

In the meantime, Lucy Burns, fighting desperately all the
way, had been deposited in a cell opposite.

As always, when she was arrested, she took charge of the
situation. In her clear, beautiful voice, she began calling
the roll one name after another, to see if all were there and
alive. The guards called, " Shut up ! " but she paid no
more attention to them than if they had not spoken.
" Where is Mrs. Lewis ? " she demanded. Mrs. Cosu an-

THE STRANGE LADIES 275

swered : " They have just thrown her in here." The guard
yelled to them that if they spoke again, he would put them
in strait-jackets. Mrs, Nolan and Mrs. Cosu were so ter-
rified that they kept still for a while.

But Lucy Burns went right on calling the roll. When she
refused — at the guard's orders — to stop this, they hand-
cuffed her wrists and fastened the handcuffs above her head
to the cell door. They threatened her with a buckle gag.
Little Julia Emory could do nothing to help, of course, but
she put her hands above her head in exactly the same position
and stood before her door until they released Lucy Bums.
Lucy Burns wore her handcuffs all night.

Mrs. Henry Butterworth, for some capricious reason, was
taken away from the rest, and placed in a part of the jail
where there were only men. They told her that she was
alone with the men, and that they could do what they pleased
with her. Her Night of Terror was doubly terrifying — ^with
this menace hanging over her.

For a description of the rest of that night, and of suc-
ceeding days, I quote the account of Paula Jakobi:

I didn't know at the time what happened to the otSer women.
I only knew that it was hell let loose with Whittaker as the
instigator of the horror. In the ante-chamber to the cells, some
of the guards were standing, swinging night sticks in a menacing
manner. We were thrust into cells; the ventilators were closed.
The cells were bitter cold. There was an open toilet in the
corner of the cell, which was flushed from the outside. We had
to call a guard who had previously attacked us to flush them.
The doors were barred, there were no windows. The doors were
uncurtained, so that through the night the guard could look into
the cell. There was no light in the room, only one in the cor-
ridor. Three of us were thrown into every cell. There was a
single bed in each room and a mattress on the floor. The floors
were filthy as were the blankets.

In the morning, we were roughly told to get up. No facilities
for washing were given us. Faint, ill, exhausted, we were ordered
before the superintendent. It was eight o'clock and we had had
no food since the preceding day at twelve. None had been
offered us, nor were any inquiries made about our physical con-

276 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

dition. Whittaker asked my name; then whether I would go to
the Workhouse and obey prison regulations and be under the care
of the ladies. I told him I would not. I would not wear prison
clothes, and I demanded the rights of political prisoners. He
interrupted me with, " Then you'll go to the male hospital " — he
emphasized the " male " — " and be in solitary confinement. Do
you change your mind.^ " I said " No! " and was taken to the
hospital by a trusty.

Then followed a series of bullying, of privileges, and of cur-
tailing them. The first day at three o'clock milk and bread were
brought to the room. After I refused it, it was taken away.
That evening some more milk and bread were brought. These
were left in the room all night. The second day toast and milk
were brought. These were left in the room all night. The third
day the matron suggested an egg and cofFee for breakfast. I
told her I did not want anything to eat. This day at lunch time
fried chicken and salad were brought in. Later Miss Burns
passed a note which read, " I think this riotous feast which has
just passed our doors is the last effort of the institution to dis-
lodge all of us who can be dislodged. They think there is
nothing in our souls above fried chicken." No matter what was
offered, a glass of milk and piece of bread were left from meal
to meal, and once bouillon and bread was left.

The fast did not make me ill at this time, only weak. The
second day there was slight nausea and headache; the third day,
fever and dizziness ; the fever remained, causing very dry, peel-
ing skin and swollen lips. By the third day, I was rather nervous
— there were no other manifestations except increasing weakness
and aphasia. I could remember no names, and it was quite im-
possible to read.

We were summoned so often and so suddenly from our jooms
to see Whittaker, or to have the rooms changed — ^we were in the
same room scarcely two consecutive nights — that one was never
sure when she would be searched and when the few remaining
treasures would be taken from us, so I hid stubbs of pencils in
my pillow, ripping the ticking with a hairpin, and one pencil in
the hem of the shade. The dimes and nickels for the trusty I
placed in a row over the sill of the door, paper behind the steam
radiator pipes. It was difficult to find places to secrete anything,
for the only furniture in the room was a single iron bed and one
chair. Notes to one another are passed by tapping furtively on
the steampipe running through the walls ; then, when the answer
comes, passing the note along the pipe. Everything is con-
ducive to concealment.

THE STRANGE LADIES 27T

The second day our writing materials were asked for (I did
not give up those I had hidden). Then we were summoned to
Whittaker— each of the hunger strikers. (There were now
seventeen of us.) E[e had a stenographer with him. He asked
my name; then, "Are you comfortable?" His manner was
quite changed; he was as civil as he could be. I answered
him with the little formula, " I demand the right to be
treated as a political prisoner. I am now treated as a common
criminal."

He: If you have steak and vegetables, will you go to the Work-
house and obey rules ?

I : I will not.

He: If you will promise not to picket any more and to leave
Washington soon, I will let you go without paying any fine and
I'll take you to Washington in my own autompbile.

I: I will not promise this.

He: What is it you want?

I: The right to keep my own clothes, to have nourishing food
permanently, which will not be taken away and given back at
your wiU, the right to send and receive mail, and above all, the
right to see counsel and have fresh air exercise.

He: If I grant you all these things, will you go to the Work-
house and work?

I : I will not.

He : Are the matrons and internes kind to you ?

I: Yes.

He : What food is left in your room ?

I : Chiefly bread and milk, once bouillon and toast.

He: Anything else?

I: No.

He : Have you any request ?

I: That I receive the rights due me — those of a political
prisoner.

Whittaker will use these interviews in expurgated form, I
am sure. When I said anything which did not please him, he
said to the stenographer, " You. needn't put that down."

After the above interviews, he absolutely refused to let our
counsel who came from Washington see us.

After my visit to Whittaker this day, I was summoned to the
Workhouse. My clothes were listed — ^those I wore — before two
matrons, just as those of criminals are listed; then I was obliged
to undress before the two matrons and two trusties, walk to a
shower, take a bath, and dress before them in prison clothes.
The clothes were clean, but so coarse that they rubbed my skin

278 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

quite raw. They have two sizes of shoes for the prisoners —
large and small.

The only message which reached me from " outside " was a
telegram from a friend asking that I allow my bail to be paid.
I answered that I would not. This day six girls in our section
were taken away " somewhere." The sense of some unknown
horror suddenly descending is the worst of the whole situation.
Whittaker's suave manner was interrupted for a moment this day
when he came into the hospital ward and saw Julia Emory in
the corridor — she was returning from the wash-room — and
taking Julia by the neck he threw her into her cell. " Get in
there," he snarled, or words to that effect. ... I was coming
out of an adjoining wash-room at the moment, and saw this.

This night I had a most vivid dream. The interne brought in
a rabbit. He held it up and told us he would cook it for us.
The women — our women — did not wait for him to cook it, but
rushed toward him, pulled it from his hands, and tore the living
animal into pieces and ate it. I awoke, sobbing.

Next evening, there was great commotion in our corridor.
The doors, which did not lock, were held; there were rapid
footsteps to and fro. Distressed sounds came from the room
adjoining mine, and soon it was evident that Miss Burns was
being forcibly fed. Half an hour earlier, her condition was found
normal by the doctor, who strolled casually through our ward,
looked in at the door, nodded, felt her pulse, and went on.
Now Miss Burns was being forcibly fed. What could it mean?
Then there were more hurried steps, and the men went to Mrs.
Lewis's room. Fifteen minutes later, they were both hurried into
an ambulance and taken away — no one told us where. We had
visions accentuated that night, of being separated, hurried out of
sight to oblivion, somewhere away from every one we knew.

A detachment of the United States Marines guarded the
place. The prisoners were kept incommunicado. That
meant, not only were they not allowed visitors, but they were
not allowed counsel — and counsel is one of the inalienable
rights of citizenship.

In the meantime at Headquarters, the Suffragists, under
the leadership of Doris Stevens, now that Alice Paul and
Lucy Burns were both in prison, could not even find out
where the prisoners were. They had received a jail sentence
but were not in the District Jail. Eatherine Morey, in great

THE STRANGE LADIES 279

anxiety in regard to her mother, who was one of the pris-
oners, came from Boston to see her. She could not even
locate her. Finally, she hit on the device of meeting the
morning train, on which released prisoners always came from
Occoquan, and one of them informed her that her mother
was at the Workhouse.

In the meantime, sixteen of the women had gone on a
hunger-strike. They were committed to Occoquan on Wednes-
day, November 14. By the following Sunday, Superin-
tendent Whittaker became alarmed. He declared he would
not forcibly feed any of them unless they signed a paper
saying that they themselves were responsible for any injury
upon their health. Of course, they all refused to do this,
ivhereupon Superintendent Whittaker said : " All right, yoii
can starve." However, by Sunday night, he was a little
shaken in this noble resolution. He went to Mrs. Lewis, and
asked her what could be done. Mrs. Lewis answered that
all they asked was to be treated as political offenders, which
provided for exercise, receiying of njail and visitors, buying
food and reading matter. He asked her to write this state-
ment out in his name, as though he demanded it. On Mond«y
he brought the statement to the Commissioners of the Dis-
trict of Columbia. Commissioner Gardner gave out a state-
ment that such demands would never be granted.

In the meantime too, Matthew O'Brien, the counsel for
the Woman's Party, succeeded in getting an order from the
Court which admitted him to Occoquan. He saw Mrs. Lewis,
Mrs. Brannan, and Miss Bums once ; but afterwards in spite
of his Court order, they refused him admission.

It had been part of the system in attempting to lower
Miss Burns's morale to take her clothes away from her.
When Mr. O'Brien visited Miss Burns she was lying on a
cot in a dark cell, wrapped in blankets. He came back
to Headquarters filled with admiration for her extraordinai'y
spirit. He said that she was as much herself as if they were
talking in the drawing-room of Cameron House. Mrs.
Nolan, released at the end of her six day sentence, also

280 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

brought the news of what happened back to Headquarters.
These were the things that made the Suffragists determine
on habeas corpus proceedings. Mr. O'Brien applied to the
United States District Court at Richmond for this writ. It
was granted returnable on November 27. Mr. O'Brien, how-
ever, afraid that, in combination with the indignities to which
they were being submitted, the women would collapse from
starvation, made another journey to Judge Waddill, who
set the hearing forward to the 23rd.

The next step was serving the writ on Superintendent
Whittaker. This was done by a ruse. On the night of the
21st, Mr. O'Brien called at Superintendent Whittaker's
home. He was told that the Superintendent was not there.
Mr. O'Brien went not far away, and telephoned that he
would not return until the morning. Then he returned im-
mediately to Superintendent Whittaker's home, found him
there, of course, and served the papers.

In the meantime. Superintendent Whittaker began to fear
that Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Lucy Burns would die. Un-
known to the other prisoners — and thereby causing them the
most intense anguish — ^he had them taken to the hospital of
the District Jail. They had been forcibly fed at Occoquan,
and the feeding was continued at the jail.

Mrs. Lewis writes:

I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me,
a young colored woman leaping upon my knees, which seemed to
break under the weight. Dr. Grannon then forced the tube
through my lips and down my throat, I gasping and suffocating
with the agony of it. I didn't know where to breathe from, and
everything turned black when the fluid began pouring in. I was
moaning and making the most awful sounds quite against my
will, for I did not wish to disturb my friends in the next room.
Finally the tube was withdrawn. I lay motionless. After a
while I was dressed and carried in a chair to a waiting auto-
mobile, laid on the back seat,"and driven into Washington to the
jail hospital. Previous to the feeding I had been forcibly exam-
ined by Dr. Gannon, I struggling and protesting that I wished
a woman physician.

THE STRANGE LADIES 281

Lucy Burns was fed through the nose. Her note, smug-
gled out of jail, is as follows:

Wednesday, 12 m. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five,
Mrs. Lewis and I were asked to go to the operating room.
Went there and found our clothes. Told we were to go to Wash-
ington. No reason, as usual. When we were dressed Dr.
Gannon appeared, said he wished to examine us. Both re-
fused. Were dragged through halls by force, our clothing partly
removed by force, and we were examined, heart tested, blood
pressure and pulse taken. Of course such data was of no value
after such a struggle. Dr. Gannon told me that I must be fed.
Was stretched on bed, two doctors, matron, four colored pris-
oners present, Whittaker in hall. I was held down by five people
at legs, arms, and head. I refused to open mouth, Gannon
pushed the tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head
all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and
throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn
out covered with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food
dumped directly into stomach feels like a ball of lead. Left
nostril, throat, and muscles of neck very sore all night. After
this I was brought into the hospital in an ambulance. Mrs.
Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at all.

This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis
and I said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in
men guards and force us to submit. Went away and we not fed
at all this morning. We hear them outside now cracking eggs.

We resume Paula Jakobi's account:

We were summoned two days later to appear at Alexandria
jail next day, Ifriday of that week — that would make nine days
spent in the Workhouse.

A writ of habeas corpus had been issued for our unjust im-
prisonment at Occoqnan when we had been sentenced to Wash-
ington jail. This day I fainted. It was now seven and a half
days since I had started hunger-striking. Three young doctors
came in to have a look at the hunger-strikers. They did not take
our pulse; they just gazed and departed. Later in the day, I
was told that I could not go to court next day if I did not eat,
as they would not take the responsibility for my trip. They
prepared to forcibly feed me. I concluded to eat voluntarily,
since I had to break my fast, so that evening I had a baked
potato and a baked apple. Next morning I ate no breakfast, but

282 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

was threatened with forcible feeding at noon if I did not eat,
so I ate again.

The next day we were taken to Alexandria Court House. There
we found out why Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis had been taken
away from Occoquan. It was to prevent their appearance at
Court, although it was shown that Whittaker had been removed
after he had received the writ of habeas corpus. Our counsel
pleaded for their appearance in Court. The warden of the
Washington jail, where they now were, was so solicitous for
their health that he feared to move them. Mr. Dudley Field
Malone asked him whether they were being forcibly fed. The
warden replied that they were. " How many men does it take
to hold Miss Burns?" Mr. Malope quietly questioned, " whUe
she is being forcibly fed ? " Zinkham answered, " Four."
" Then, your Honor," asked Mr. Malone, " don't you think that
if it takes four men to hold Miss Burns to give her forcible
feeding, she is strong enough to appear in Court? "

Next day, both Mrs. Lewis and Miss Burns were at the
trial.

It was found that our detention in the Workhouse was illegal
and we were given our freedom on parole. I refused to accept
it, and with twenty-two other prisoners was taken to Washington
jail to finish my term of imprisonment.

The Suffragists were brought from Occoquan to the Court
on November 23, according to schedule. Their condition
was shocking. They all showed in their paUor and weakness
the effect of the brutal regime to which they had been sub-
jected. The older women could hardly walk, and were sup-
ported by their younger and stronger companions. When
'they reached their chairs, they lay back in them, utterly worn
out. Mrs. John Winters Brannan collapsed, and had to be
taken from the Courtroom.

As Paula Jakobi has stated. Judge Waddill decided that
the thirty-one Suffragists had been illegally committed to
Occoquan Workhouse, and were entitled to liberation on bail
pending an appeal or the return to the District Jail.

Rose Winslow, it wiU be remembered, was tried at the
same time as Alice Paul and received a sentence of seven
months.

THE STRANGE LADIES 283

Here are some extracts from the prison notes of Rose
Winslow smuggled out to friends:

The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is
as thin as ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in solitary
for five weeks. There is nothing to tell but that the days go
by somehow. I have felt quite feeble the last few days — faint, so
that I could hardly get my hair combed, my arms ached so. But
today I am well again. Alice Paul and I talk back and forth
though we are at opposite ends of the building and a hall door
also shuts us apart. But occasionally — ^thrills — we escape from
behind our iron-barred doors and visit. Great laughter and re-
joicing! . . .

I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The
other one was cut d£F, having rotted so that it was alive with
maggots when she came in. The remaining one is now getting as
bad. They are so short of nurses that a little colored girl of
twelve, who is here waiting to have her tonsils removed, waits
on her. This child and two others share a ward with a syphilitic
child of three or four years, whose mother refused to have it at
home. It makes you absolutely ill to see it. I am going to
break all three windows as a protest against their boarding ^ice
Paul with these !

Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found
we had been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this
syphilitic child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the
time, is also bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room
where he lives came yesterday two children to be operated on
for tonsilitis. They also bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic
woman has been in that room seven months. Cheerful mixing,
isn't it? The place is alive with roaches, crawling all over the
walls everywhere. I found one in my bed the other day. . . .

In regard to the forcible feeding, she said:

Yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting
continually during the process. The tube has developed an irrita-
tion somewhere that is painful. . . .

I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the bath-
room where I was washing my hands, and was led to bed, when
I recovered, by a nurse. I lost consciousness just as I got there
again. I felt horribly faint until twelve o'clock, then fell asleep
for awhile. ...

The same doctor feeds us both. . . . Don't let them tell you

284 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

we take this well. Miss Paul vomits much. I do, too, except
when I'm not nervous, as I have been every time but one. The
feeding always gives me a severe headache. My throat aches
afterward, and I always weep and sob, to my great disgust,
quite against my will. I try to be less feeble-minded.

The final barbarity, however, in the treatment of the
pickets came out in the experience of Alice Paul. Of course,
the Administration felt that in jailing Alice Paul, they had
the " ringleader." That was true. What they did not
realize, however, was that they had also jailed the inspired
reformer, the martyr-type, who dies for a principle, but
never bends or breaks. Miss Paul was arrested, it will be
remembered, on October 20. The banner that she carried
had, in the light of later events, a grim significance. It
bore President Wilson's own words :

THE TIME HAS COME TO OONaTTEtt OR SUBMIT. FOK US THEEE
CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.

Her sentence was seven months.

" I am being imprisoned," said Miss Paul as she was
taken from the District Police Court to the patrol wagon
that carried her to jail, " not because I obstructed traiBe,
but because I pointed out to President Wilson the fact that
he is obstructing the progress of justice and democracy at
home while Americans fight for it abroad."

When Alice Paul reached the jail, she found ten other
Suffragists who had been brought there four days before
from Occoquan. The air of this jail was stifling. There
were about seventy-five women prisoners locked in three tiers
of cells, and no window had been opened. The first appeal
of the Suffragists to Alice Paul was for air.

Alice Paul, not committed to her cell yet, looked about
her. High up she saw a little, round window with a rope
hanging from it. She asked the matron why they did not
open the window. " If we started opening windows, we
should have to give the colored women more clothes," the
matron told her.

THE STRANGE LADIES 286

With her usual promptness and decision Alice Paul crossed
the corridor and pulled the window open. There was no
place to fasten the rope so she stood there holding it. The
matron called for the guards. Two of them, unusually big
and husky in comparison with Alice Paul's ninety-five
pounds, tried to take the rope away. It broke in her hands,
the window closed, and the guards carried Miss Paul to her
cell.

Alice Paul had brought, in the pocket of her coat, a
volume of Browning. Before they closed the door, she threw
it with what Florence Boeckel describes as a " desperate, sure
aim," through the window.

Miss Paul's confreres say that it is amusingly symbolic
of the perfection of her aim in all things that she hit one
of the little panes of that faraway window. As the glass
had not been repaired when the Suffragists left jail, they had
the pure air they demanded. They said that the old-timers
told them it was the first good air they had ever smelled
in jail.

Alice Paul and Rose Winslow went on hunger-strike

-at once. This strike lasted three weeks and a day.

The last two weeks they were forcibly fed. Both women

became so weak that they were finally moved to the

hospital.

Two or three alienists with Commissioner Gardner were
brought in to examine Alice Paul. They usually referred to
her in her presence as " this case." One of the alienists,
visiting her for the first time, said to the nurse, " Will this
patient talk?" Alice Paul burst into laughter.

" Talk ! " she exclaimed. " That's our business to talk.
Why shouldn't we talk.? "

" Well, some of them don't talk, you know," the alienist
said.

" Well, if you want me to talk " Weak as she was.

Miss Paul sat up in bed and gave him a hiistory of the
Suffrage movement beginning just before the period of Susan
B. Anthony and coming down to that moment. It lasted an

286 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

hour. This alienist told the present writer that in his report
to the authorities he said in effect:

" There is a spirit like Joan of Arc, and it is as useless to
try to change it as to change Joan of Arc. She will die
but she will never give up."

Alice Paul says that she realized after a while that the
questions of the alienists were directed towards establishing
in her one of the well-known insane phobes — ^the mania of
persecution. The inquiries converged again and again to-
ward one point: "Did she think the President personally
responsible for what was occurring? " As it happened
her sincere conclusion in this matter helped in estab-
lishing their conviction of her sanity. She always answered
that she did not think the President was responsible in her
case — that he was perhaps uninformed as to what was
going on.

Notwithstanding the favorable report of the alienist, after
a while they removed Alice Paul from the hospital to the
psychopathic ward. The conditions under which she lived
here are almost incredibly sinister. It is difBcult to avoid
the conclusion that it was hoped that they would affect
Alice Paul's reason; would certainly discredit the movement
she led by making the world believe that she was mentaUy
unbalanced. The room in which she was confined was big
and square, pleasant enough. It had two windows, one of
which they boarded up. They took off the wooden door and
replaced it with a grated door. All day long patients—
mentally unbalanced — came to that door and peered in at
her. All night long, shrieks rang in her ears. Just before
dawn would come an interval of quiet, then invariably it
was broken by the long, harrowing, ululating cries of a single
patient who kept this up for hours.

One of the alienists told the nurse to keep Miss Paul
under observation. This observation consisted of flashing a
light in her face every hour all night long. This — ^naturaUy
— brought her with a start out of her sleep. She averaged',
she says, only a little sleep between flashes. Of course one

THE STRANGE LADIES 287

cannot but think that if she had been trembling on the verge
of insanity, this process would certainly have pushed her
over the edge.

The women nurses were almost unfailingly kind and
thoughtful. One carried her kindness to the point of saying
once, "You know, I don't think you are insane." Alice
Paul says, it was staggering to have people express their
friendliness for you by assuring you that they thought you
were in your right mind. The doctor who forcibly fed her
protested against having to do it. She was kept in the
psychopathic ward a week incommunicado. When it was
discovered where she was, Dudley Field Malone got her re-
moved back to the hospital. Of course the forcible feeding
went on.

In the files at Headquarters, there are dozens of affidavits
made by the women who went to jail for picketing. It is a
gre&t pity that they cannot all be brought to the attention
of a newly enfranchised sex. More burningly than anything
else, these affidavits would show that sex what work lies
before them, as far as penal institutions are concerned. I
quote but one of them — that of Ada Davenport Kendall —
because it sums up so succinctly and specifically the things
that the prison pickets saw.

I went into Occoqnan Prison as a prisoner on September 13,
1917.

I went in with the idea of obeying the regulations and of being
a reasonable prisoner.

While there I saw such injustice, neglect, and cruelty on the
part of the officials that I was forced into rebellion.

During my thirty days' imprisonment I saw that commis-
sioners and other officials made occasional visits but that the
people in charge were usually warned and used much deception
on the occasion of these visits. Specially prepared food replaced
the wormy, fermenting, and meager fare of ordinary days.
Girls too frail to work were hurried off the scrubbing and
laundry gangs, and were found apparently resting. Sick women
were hidden. Girls were hurried out of. punishment cells as the
Visitors proceeded through the buildings, and were hidden in
linen rooms or rooms of matrons already inspected.

288 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

While there I was treated with indignities. I was insulted
by loud-mouthed officials at every turn, was stripped before other
women, stripped of all toilet necessities, warm underwear, and
ordinary decencies, was deprived of soap, tooth-brush, writing
materials, and sufficient clothing and bed coverings. I was
dressed first in clean garments, but the officials later punished me
by putting me in unclean clothing and into a filthy bed in which
a diseased negress had slept. In the hospital I was obliged to
use the toilet which diseased negro women used, although there
was a clean unused toilet in the building.

With the four other women who were sentenced with me I
was fed food filled with worms and vile with saltpeter; food
consisting of cast-o£F and rotting tomatoes, rotten horse meat and
insect-ridden starches. There were no fats: no milk, butter, nor
decent food of any kind. Upon this fare I was put at hard labor
from seven a.m. until five p.m., with a short luncheon out. We
were not allowed to use the paper cups we had brought, but were
forced to drink from an open pail, from common cups.

After several days of driven labor this group was ordered to
wash the floors and clean the toilets in the dormitory for the
colored inmates. I protested for the whole group: said we
would not do this dangerous work. For this I was put in
solitary confinement which lasted for nearly seven days. Water
was brought three times in the twenty-four hours, in a small
paper cup. Three thin slices of bread were brought in twenty-
four hours. Several times matrons with attendants came in and
threatened me and threw me about. They searched me for notes
or any writing, and threw me about and tore my clothes. I was
allowed no water for toilet, and the only toilet convenience was
an open bucket. No reading nor writing materials were al-
lowed. Mail was cut off, as it was nearly all of the time while I
was in prison. I was not allowed to see an attorney during this
period. The bed had been slept in and was filthy, and there
was no other furniture. After six days, influential friends were
able to reach my case from outside the prison, and I was taken
out of solitary confinement.

While in prison I heard men and women crying for help, and
heard the sound of brutal lashes for long periods, — ^usually in
the evening, after visitors were not expected.

I saw a woman have a hemorrhage from the lungs at nine in
the morning — saw her lie neglected, heard the matrons refuse to
call a doctor; and at eleven saw the woman carry a tobacco pail
filled with water to scrub a floor ; saw her bleeding while she was
scrubbing, and when she cried a matron scolded her.

THE STRANGE LADIES 289

Saw a young dope fiend who was insane run out of a door,
and heard a matron at the telephone order men to loose the
bloodhounds upon this girl in the dark. Soon heard the dogs
howling and running about.

Saw men with fetters on legs being driven to and from
work.

Saw matrons choke and shake girls.

Was continually disgusted with lack of fair play in the insti-
tution.

Inmates were set to spy upon the others, and were rewarded
or punished, as they played the game of the matrons.

Saw sick girls working in laundry. Saw diseased women
sleeping, bathing, and eating with other inmates.

Saw armed men driving prisoners to work.

Saw milk and vegetables shipped to Washington, and rotting
vegetables brought up from city market.

Saw unconscious women being brought from punishment cells.

Saw sick women refused medical help, and locked in the hos-
pital without attendance to suffer. Saw them refused milk or
proper food. Saw them refused rest, and once I saw the only
medical attendant kick at a complaining inmate and slam the
office door in her face.

Found that whUe the institution was supposed to build and
improve inmates, they were ordinarily not allowed any recreation
nor proper cleanliness. No classes were held, and no teaching of
any sort was attempted. They were deprived of all parcels, and
mail was usually withheld both coming and going. Visitors and
attorneys were held up, and the prisoners usually absolutely shut
away from help.

Found that no rules governing the rights of the prisoners had
been codified by the Congressional Committee responsible for the
institution, and was told by .the superintendent that the prisoners
had no rights and that the superintendent could treat the inmates
as he liked.

Under that management, the matrons, while apparently ordi-
narily decent and often making a good first impression, were
found to be brutal and unreasonable in their care of inmates.

The inmates were driven, abused, insulted. They were not
allowed to speak in the dining-room or workrooms or dormitories.
It was a place of chicanery, sinister horror, brutality, and
dread.

No one could go there for a stay who would not be permanently
injured. No one could come out without just resentment against
any government which could maintain such an institution.

290 THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

As has been told before Judge Waddill decided that the
pickets had been illegally transferred from the Jail to
Occoquan and they were sent back to the Jail. But between
Occoquan and Jail occurred one night, in which the pickets
were released in the custody of Dudley Field Malone, their
counsel. They went immediately to Cameron* House and
broke their hunger-strike — spent the evening before the fire,
talking and sipping hot milk. The next day they were com-
mitted to jail again and immediately started a new hunger-
strike.

The government, however, undoubtedly appalled by the
protests that came from all over the country, and perhaps,
in addition, staggered at the prospect of forcibly feeding
so many women, released them all three days later.

A mass-meeting was held at the Belasco Theatre early in
December to welcome them. The auditorium was crowded
and there was an overflow meeting of four thousand outside
on the sidewalk. The police reserves, who had so often, in
previous months, come out to arrest pickets, now came out
to protect them from the thousands of people who gathered
in their honor. Elsie Hill addressed this overflow meeting,
which shivered in the bitter cold for over an hour, yet
stayed to hear her story.

Inside, eighty-one women in white, all of whom had served
in the Jail or the Workhouse, carrying lettered banners and
purple, white, and gold banners, marched down the two
center aisles of the theatre and onto the stage. There were
speeches by Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, Dudley Field Malone,
Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, and Maud
Younger. Then came an interval in which money was raised.
Two touching details were sums of fifty cents and thirty
cents pledged from Occoquan "because the Suffragettes
helped us so much down there." And Mrs. John Rogers, Jr.,
on behalf of the pickets gave " tenderest thanks for this
help from our comrades in the Workhouse."

Eighty-six thousand, three hundred and eighty-six dollars
was raised in honor of the pickets.

THE STRANGE LADIES 291

On that occasion, prison pins which were tiny replicas
in silver of the cell doors, were presented to each " prisoner
of freedom."

As Alice Paul appeared to receive her pin, Dudley Field
Malone called, " Alice Paul," and the audience leaped to its
feet ; the cheers and applause lasted until she disappeared at
the back of the platform.

It is a poignant regret to the present author that she
cannot go further into conditions at the District Jail and
at Occoquan in regard to the other prisoners there. But
that is another story and must be told by those whose work
is penal investigation. The Suffragists uncovered conditions
destructive to body and soul ; incredibly inhumane ! One of
the heart-breaking handicaps of the swift, intensive war-
fare of the pickets was that, although they did much to
ameliorate conditions for their fellow prisoners, they could
not make them ideal. Piteous appeal after piteous appeal
came to them from their " comrades in the Workhouse."

" If we go on a hunger-strike, will they make things better
for us?" the other prisoners asked again and again.

" No," the Suffragists answered sadly. " You Yiaire no
organization back of you."

However, in whatever ways were open to them the Suf-
fragists offered counsel and assistance of all kinds.

I asked one of the pickets once how the other prisoners
regarded them. She answered : " They called us ' the strange
ladies.' "

TELLING THE COUNTRY

In the meantime, the country had not been kept misinformed
or uninformed in regard to the treatment of the pickets.
Of course, the press teemed with descriptions of their pro-
tests and its results. Again and again their activities pushed
war news out of the preferred position on the front page
of the newspapers. Again and again they snatched the head-
lines from important personages and events. But despite
flaming headlines, these newspaper accounts were inevitably
brief and incomplete; sometimes unfair. The Woman's
Party determined that the great rank and file, who might
be careless or cautious of newspaper narration, should hear
the whole extraordinary story. Picketing began in January,
1917. By the end of September, long before Alice Paul's
arrest and through October and November, therefore,
speakers were sent all over the United States. Alice Paul
divided the States into four parts, twelve States each : Maud
Younger went to the South; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and
Mabel Vernon to the Middle West ; Anne Martin to the far
West; Abby Scott Baker and Doris Stevens to the East.
Ahead of them went the swift band of organizers who always
so ably and intensively prepared the way for Woman's
Party activity.

Public opinion became more and more intrigued, began to
blaze oftener and oftener into protest as successive parties
of pickets were arrested. The climax, of course, was the
climactic Administration mistake — the arrest of Alice Paul.
And as it began to dawn on the country that she was kept
incommunicado . . . that she was in the psychopathic
ward . . . alienists . . . hunger-striking . . . forcible
feeding. . . .

292

TELLING THE COUNTRY 293

The speakers had extraordinary experiences, especially
those who went into the strongholds of the Democrats in
the South. Again and again when they told about the jail
conditions, and how white women were forced into associa-
tion with the colored prisoners, were even compelled to
paint the toilets used by the colored prisoners, men would
rise in the audience and say, "There are a score of men
here who'll go right up to Washington and burn that
jail down." It has been said that Warden Zinkham re-
ceived by mail so many threats against his life that he went
armed.

From Headquarters, telegrams Were sent to speakers as
the situation grew at Washington, informing them as to the
arrests, the actions of the police, sentences, et caetera. Often
these telegrams would come in the midst of a speech. The
speaker always read them to the audience. Once after
Doris Stevens had read such a telegram, " Do you protest
against this ? " she demanded of her audience. " We do ! "
they yelled, rising as one man to their feet.

Suddenly while everything was apparently going smoothly,
audiences large, indignantly sympathetic, actively protes-
tive, change came. Everywhere obstacles were put in the
way of the speakers. That this was the result of concerted
action on the part of the authorities was evident from the
fact that within a few days four speakers in different parts
of the country felt this blocking influence.

In Arkansas they recalled Mabel Vernon's permit for the
Court House. In Connecticut, newspapers began to call
Berta Crone pro-German, to attack her in a scurrilous
manner.

Anne Martin's meeting throughout the West had gone on
without interruption of any kind. When, however, she ar-
rived in Los Angeles, she was met by a Federal officer and
told that there could be no meeting in Los Angeles. Miss
Martin's answer was to read to him a section on the right
of free speech and assemblage, to inform him that he could
not prevent the meeting, to assure him that he was welcome

294 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

to attend it, and to invite him to arrest her if she made any
seditious remarks. The attempt was then made to get her
right to use the hotel ball-room, in which she was to hold
the meeting, canceled. However, when Miss Martin told the
management that she had made the same speech at the St.
Francis Hotel in San Francisco, they agreed to let her have
the hall. Federal officers sat on the platform and inter-
rupted her speech, saying, " You've said enough about the
President now." Anne Martin replied, " If Fve said any-
thing seditious it's your duty to arrest me. Otherwise I'm
going on with my speech." The audience applauded. Within
a few minutes, five hundred dollars was collected in that
audience for the struggle in the Capitol. Later, one of the
Secret Service men warned Miss Martin not to make the
same speech in San Diego. " I told him," Miss Martin said,
" to follow me and arrest me at any time he wished to, but
in the meantime to stop speaking to me." She had no fur-
ther trouble in California.

Maud Younger's experiences in the South and West were
so incredible in these days of free speech that it deserves
a detailed narration.

She had passed through nine southern Democratic
States. Every speech had been received enthusiastically,
with sympathy, and without question. Suddenly the cry
of " Treason," " Pro-German," was raised. She was to
speak at Dallas, Texas, on Monday, November 18. But
the organizer found she could not engage a hall nor even a
room at the hotel in which Miss Younger could speak. The
Mayor would not allow hei* to hold a street meeting. Miss
Younger whose speeches are always the maximum of ac-
curacy, informedness, feeling — coupled with a kind of diplo-
matic suavity-^-oflFered to submit her speech for censorship.
They refused her even that. Finally on Monday morning
a hall was found and engaged. The people who rented it
canceled that engagement on Monday afternoon. The re-
porters flocked to see Miss Younger, who astutely said to
them, " Of course the President is not responsible for '

TELLING THE COUNTRY 296

etc, etc." — ad libitum — ^not responsible, in brief, for all the
things she would have said in her speech. Miss Condon,
who was organizing in that vicinity, had a little office on
the top floor and decided to hold a meeting there. Miss
Younger spoke to a small audience drummed up as hastily
as possible, notifying newspaper and police when the audi-
ence was about to arrive. There were detectives present.
Miss Younger takes great joy in the fact that in attending
this meeting, these detectives, following the accepted tactics
of detectives, heavy-handedly — or heavy-footedly — ^got out
of the elevator on the floor below; tiptoed solemnly up to
the floor of the meeting, thus proclaiming loudly to the
world that they were detectives.

In Memphis, Miss Younger had the assistance of Sue
White, ^o, not then a member of the Woman's Party, be-
came subsequently one of its most active, able, and devoted
workers. Miss White who is very well known in her State,
had just gained great public approbation by registering
fifty thousand women for war work. She fought hard and
constantly to preserve Miss Younger's speaking schedule in
the nine Tennessee towns. But it was impossible in many
cases. Everywhere they were fought by the Bar Association
and the so-called Home Defense Leagues; and often by
civic officials. The Bar Association et caetera appointed a
committee to go to all hotels, or meeting-places, to ask them
not to rent rooms for Miss Younger's meetings, and to
mayors to request them not to grant permits for street
meetings. The Mayor of Brownsville, for instance, tele-
phoned to the Mayor of Jackson : " I believe in one God,
one Country, and one President; for God's sake keep those
pickets from coming to Brownsville." Fortunately every-
where, as has almost invariably happened in the Suffrage
movement, Labor came to their rescue.

In the towns where it was impossible to get a hall, Miss
Younger did not stay to fight it out. First of all, she felt
the situation had developed into a free speech fight between
the people of these towns and their local governments. It

296 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

was for them to make the fight. Moreover, she wanted as
far as possible to keep to her schedule.

Sue White went on ahead to Jackson, which was her own
home town, and appealed to the Judge for the use of the
Court House. The Mayor said he could not legally prevent
the meeting. Miss White opened the Court House and
lighted it. In the meantime, the Chief of Police met Miss
Younger in the Court House before the meeting began. He
told her if she said anything against the President, he would
arrest her. He came to the meeting that night, but left as
soon as he discovered how harmless it was — Charmless, that
is, so far as the President was concerned. The audience
unanimously passed a resolution asking the Mayor of Nash-
ville, which was the next stop, to permit Miss Younger to
speak.

However, when she got to Nashville, the Home Defense
League had brought pressure on the local authorities and it
was impossible for her to get a hall. The organizer had
hired the ball-room of the hotel, had deposited twenty-five
dollars for it; but the manager broke his contract, refused
to allow them to use itj and refunded the money. The
prosecuting attorney, months later, boasted, "I was the
one that kept Miss Younger from speaking in Nashville."

The next two towns were Lebanon and Gallatin. In
Lebanon, although they could get no hall, they were allowed
to ibpeak in the public square. Sue White introduced Miss
Younger. It was a bitter cold day; but the weather was
not colder than the audience at first. Gradually, however,
that audience warmed up. When Miss Younger finished,
they called, " We are all with you ! " When the Suffragists
reached Gallatin, they secured the schooUiouse. There was
no time for any publicity, but Rebecca Hourwich hired a
wagon and went about the town calling, " Come to the school-
house ! Hear the White House pickets ! "

In Knoxville, they met with the same hostility from the
Bar Association. Their permit to speak in the town haU was
revoked, and even the street was denied to them. Joy

TELLING THE COUNTRY 297

Yoiing, thereupon, went to Labor. The local Labor leader,
who was the editor of the Labor paper, saw at once that it
was a free speech fight. He said that Labor would make
the fight for the Suffragists, He also pointed out that
though the Mayor was a Democrat, the Judge was a Repub-
lican. He went to the Judge and asked for the Court
House. The Judge said that it was not within his power
to grant the Court House; that three county officials, to
whom, twelve years before, jurisdiction in this matter had
been given, must decide the question. These county ofiicials
agreed to the proposition. Again the Bar Association inter-
fered. All day long telephone pressure, pro and con, was
brought to bear on these county officials. In the end it was
decided to have a preliminary rehearsal of Miss Younger's
speech.

At high noon, therefore, Maud Younger went to the Court
House. The prosecuting attorney opened the proceedings
by reading from a big book an unintelligible excerpt on
sedition. Miss Younger then made her forceful, witty, and
tactful speech. Of course they gave her the Court House.
The prosecuting attorney said, " For an hour I argued
against you with the Judge. Now, I don't see how he could
possibly refuse." The Judge said, " You women have a very
real grievance." Late as it was, Joy Young got out dodgers,
inviting the town to the meeting and scattered them every-
where, and the afternoon papers carried the announcement.

That night at dinner, the editor of the Labor paper called.
He told them that the Sheriff had suddenly put up the claim
of jurisdiction over the county Court House taken from him
twelve years ago, and that he would be there with a band
of armed deputies. " But," said the Labor leader, " Labor
mil he there idth eighty armed Union men to meet them."*
Of course the two Woman's Party speakers did not know
what would happen. But the only thing they did know was
that they would hold the meeting as usual. So Maud
Younger and Joy Young proceeded alone to the Court
House. They both expected to be shot. The Sheriff with

298 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

his deputies, instead of surrounding the building, went inside,
holding the place against Suffrage attack. The Labor men
stationed themselves in front of the door. The steps were
filled with audience. Joy Young introduced the speaker.
Maud Younger took up her position, and they held their
meeting outside. Miss Younger always says : " The Sheriff
had the Court House, but I had the audience."

At Chattanooga, Joy Young had explained the situation ;
The Mayor was with them; the Bar Association, the Chief
of Police, the Sheriff were against them ; so the Mayor with
the assistance of Labor and the newspapers took up their
fight. No hall was to be had, amd someone in the Bar Associa-
tion instructed the Chief of Police to enter any private house
and break up any meeting the Suffragists might hold; and the
Sheriff to do the soTne in the country outside the city limits.
But Labor was not to be outwitted. They were holding a
scheduled meeting in their own hall that night. Labor can-
celed that meeting and offered Maud Youuger the haU free.
They said they would like to see any police break up a
meeting in their hall. All day long there was a stormy
session of the Commissioners as to whether or not she might
speak. But in the end she did speak.

Later, when Maud Younger returned to Washington, she
met Senator McKellar in the course of her lobbying activi-
ties. Of course, she was astute enough to know that orders
for all this persecution had come from above. She referred
quite frankly to his efforts to stop her in Tennessee. With
equal frankness, Senator McKellar said : " I wasn't going
to have you talking against the President in Tennessee."

Ill

MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS

The various activities described in the last six chapters all
took place in the year 1917. But during all this year —
when the picketing, the arrests, the imprisonments, were
going on — ^work with Congress was of course proceeding
parallel with it. It now becomes necessary to go back to
the very beginning of the year to follow that work.

It will be remembered that early in this year there oc-
curred in Washington an event of national political impor-
tance. The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and
the Woman's Party merged into one organization.

This union of the Congressional Union with the Woman's
Party occurred on March 2. On March 3 — the last day of
his first Administration — ^President Wilson despatched the
following letter to the Hon. W. R. Crabtree, a member of
the Tennessee Legislature.

May I not express my earnest hope that the Senate of Ten-
nessee will reconsider the vote by which it rejected the legisla-
tion extending the Suffrage to women.'' Our Party is so dis-
tinctly pledged to its passage that it seems to me the moral
obligation is complete.

WooDRow Wilson.

On April 26 occurred a hearing before the Senate Com-
mittee ; Anne Martin presided. The note she struck in her
opening speech sounded all through the hearing — the
somber, sinister note of the Great War; and the necessity
of accepting the Suffrage Amendment as a war measure.

" We regard it as an act of the highest loyalty and patriotism,"
she said " to urge the passage of the Amendment at this time^
that we may, as fuUy-eqnipped, fully-enfranchised citizens, do

299

300 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

our part in carrying out and helping to solve the problems tHat
lie before the government when our country is at war."

Madeline Doty, who had traveled in Germany and in Eng-
land since the beginning of the war, gave her testimony in
regard to the degree of war-work women were contributing
in those two countries. Others spoke: Mary Beard, Ernes-
tine Evans, Mrs. Richard Wainwright, Alice Carpenter,
Hon. Jeannette Rankin, and Dudley Field Malone, at that
time still Collector of the Port of New York.

Altogether, there was a different sound to these Suffrage
arguments. Women had discovered for the first time in the
history of the world that they were a national necessity in
war, not only because they bore the soldiers who fought, not
only because they nursed the wounded, but because their
efforts in producing the very sinews of war were necessary to
its continuance.

On May 14, the Committee appointed by the National
Party (the Party formed by the former Progressive lead-
ers) : J. A. H. Hopkins, Dr. E. A. Rumley, John Spargo,
Virgil Hinshaw, Mabel Vernon, called on the President for
the purpose of discussing the passage of the Federal Suf-
frage Amendment as part of the war program.

Mabel Vernon described the interview afterwards:

The President said frankly that the lines were well laid for
the carrying out of a program in this session of Congress in
which Suffrage, he intimated, has not been included and expressed
his belief that the introducing of the question at this time might
complicate matters. He seems to feel, however, that the coming
of war has put the enfranchisement of women on a new basis.

He showed his appreciation of the rapid gains Suffrage has
made through the country when he said, " Suffrage is no longer
creeping, but advancing by strides."

The President told the Committee as proof of his willingness,
as he said, " to help Suffrage in every little way," that he had
written a letter to Representative Pou, Chairman of the Rules
Committee of the House, saying he would favor the creation of a
Woman Suffrage Committee.

MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 301

The next day. May 16, a hearing was held before the
Judiciary Committee of the House. The Progressive Com-
mittee, who had visited the President the day before, spoke,
and also a group of the Woman's Party leaders: Mrs.
William H. Kent, Mrs. John Rogers, Mrs. Donald R.
Hooker, Lucy Burns, Anne Martin, Abby Scott Baker.
Again the note of the Great War sounded through all the
speeches, and the impatience of women because everything
in the way of war service was demanded of them, but noth-
ing given in return.

Mrs. Rogers said:

You men sit here in Congress and plan to take our sons and
husbands and every cent in our pockets. Yet you say to us:
" Do not be selfish ; do not ask anything of the government now,'
but do your part."

Mrs. Rogers quoted the words of Lord Northcliffe:

The old arguments against giving women Suffrage were that
they were useless in war. But we have found that we could not
carry on the war without them. They are running many of our
industries, and their services may be justly compared to those of
our soldiers.

" It has taken England nineteen hundred years to find
this out," said Mrs. Rogers.

Also, stress was laid on the fact that, since the last hear-
ing before the Judiciary Committee, six States had granted
Presidential Suffrage to women.

In this connection, a letter written by Chairman Webb
of the Judiciary Committee to J. A. H. Hopkins of New
Jersey, is interesting.

Mr. Hopkins wrote Mr. Webb:

The suggestion in your letter, that your caucus resolution pro-
vides that the President might from time to time suggest special
war emergency legislation, puts the responsibility for the inaction
of your Committee upon the President. As the President has
already stated that he will be glad to do everything he can to
promote the cause of Woman Suffrage, it seems to me quite

302 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

evident that he has at least given your Committee the oppor-
tunity to exercise their own authority without even the fear that
they may be infringing upon your caucus rules.

In the answer which Chairman Webb sent to Mr. Hopkins,
he put the responsibility of the inaction in regard to the
Suffrage situation directly on the President.

He said:

The Democratic caucus passed a resolution that only war
emergency measures would be considered during this extra ses-
sion, and that the President might designate from time to time
special legislation which he regarded as war legislation, and such
would be acted upon by the House. The President not having
designated Woman Suffrage and national prohibition so far as
war measures, the Judiciary Committee up to this time has not
felt warranted, under the caucus rule, in reporting either of these
measures. If the President should request either or both of them
as war measures, then I think the Committee would attempt to
take some action on them promptly. So you see after all it is
important to your cause to make the President see that Woman
Suffrage comes within the rules laid down.

In May, the Rules Committee of the House of Represen-
tatives granted a hearing to Suffrage bodies on the question
of the creation of a Suffrage Committee in the House. It
will be remembered that this is the first time since December,
1913, that the Rules Committee had granted this request,
although women have worked for the creation of a Suffrage
Committee in the House since the days of Susan B. Anthony.
Chairman Fou presided.

A few days before, he had received a letter from President
Wilson, in favor of the creation of a Suffrage Committee.
For a long time now, the President had not been saying
anything about the State by State method of winning Suf-
frage, but this was the first time that he had shown a specific
interest in the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

The meeting was open to the public, and the room was
crowded. The members of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association spoke; a group of Congressmen from

MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 303

the Suffrage States, and the following members of the
Woman's Party: Anne Martin, Maud Younger, Mrs. Richard
Wainwright, Mabel Vernon.

Mrs. Richard Wainwright said:

One of the members of the Commission from England said:
" We came to America that America may not make the mistakes
that we have ! One of the mistakes that England is now trying to
rectify is not giving justice to her women. I should like the
Congress of the United States to remember what Wyoming said
when asked to join the nation: ' We do not come in without our

Miss Younger said in part:

We regard this, however (the formation of a Suffrage Com-
mittee in the House), Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of fSe Com-
mittee, as only one step toward our goal. We will not be satisfied
with this alone. It will not in any way take the place of the
passage of the Amendment. Nor are we interested in any mere
record vote which might come from the Suffrage Committee. We
are working only for the passage of the Amendment at the
earliest possible date. . . .

We ask for this measure now in war time, because the suffer-
ings of war fall heavily upon women. In case of an invading
army the greatest barbarities, the greatest cruelties, fall upon
the women. In this war, as never before, the burdens are borne
by women. Secretary Redfield said yesterday that three armies
are necessary to the prosecution of this war, the army in the
field, the army on the farm, and the army in the factories. In
these two armies at home the women are taking an increasingly
large part and the efiiciency of their work depends largely upon
the conditions under which they do this work. In England the
output of munitions was not satisfactory. The government ap-
pointed a commission to investigate. They found that the trouble
lay in the conditions under which the women worked, with the
overlong hours. They could not get the best results under such
conditions. In America today there is an effort to break down
the protective legislation that through the years has been built
up around women and children. And so for eificiency in the war
as well as for the protection of the women, we urge Suffrage
upon you now.

We do not know when this struggle may end nor to what
extent the women here may replace men. An English ship-

304 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

builder said recently that should the war last two years longer
he would build ships entirely with women. We know that all
over Europe today they are doing men's work, in field, in factory,
and in office. When the war is over and the armies march home,
whether in victory or defeat, they will find the women in their
places. Not without a struggle will the women give up the
work, but give it up they probably will. And then, without the
means of livelihood, many of them without husbands, with the
men of their families killed in war, without the chance to marry,
to bear children, they will turn to America. We can then look
forward to an immigration of women such as this country has
never known. Before that time comes we want the power to
protect the women who are here, and to prepare to meet the new
conditions that we may not be swamped by them.

We are asking for Suffrage in war time because other nations
at war are considering it now. Over a year ago, in the Hun-
garian Parliament, a deputy asked the prime minister, "When
our soldiers return from fighting our battles, will they be given
the vote? " We find men everywhere in Europe asking for Suf-
frage for themselves now in war time. In Germany today the
most powerful political party is urging the vote for women as
well as for men. Bussia, England, and France are on the verge
of enfranchising their women. But two days ago in the British
Barliament the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies urged
the immediate passage of the Suffrage measure that the govern-
ment might not be hampered by domestic problems when, at the
end of the war, international problems wiU cry for settlement and
a unified nation will be needed. In the period of reconstruction
also we feel that women have something to contribute, that we
may be of help in solving the new problems which will arise from
the war and which will tax all the resources of the people. We
ask you now to release to other service the time, the energy, the
money that is being poured into the Suffrage movement.

Lastly, we urge this now that we may prove to other nations
our sincerity in wanting to establish democracy and our unselfish
motives in going into the war.

I think of that night on the 2nd of April when, from the
gallery of the House, we heard President Wilson read his war
message. We were going to war not for any gain for ourselves
but to make the world safe for democracy. We sat there and
heard him read, and, gentlemen, you applauded, " we shall fight
for those things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,
for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority
to have a voice in their own government." And while you ap-

MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 305

plauded, some of us there in the gallery thought of the
20,000,000 of women in our own country who " submit to au-
thority without a voice in their own government," which is the
President's definition of democracy. We thought, 'too, of the
women of other nations on the verge of enfranchisement them-
selves, and we wondered how they would welcome the United
States at the peace council, to establish democracy for them —
the United States, which does not recognize its own women.

And we went out into the night. The Capitol looked very
beautiful and shining white against the dark sky. It seemed a
great beacon light to the nations of the world. Suddenly a dark
shadow fell across our path — ^the shadow of a mounted soldier.
A troop of cavalry had encircled the Capitol holding back the
people. We walked down the marble terraces and started across
the Avenue. There, again, the troop of cavalry winding down
the hUl blocked our progress. Suddenly it seemed so symbolic
of what war meant, the armed force, centralized authority, block-
ing progress, encroaching upon the people. And it came to us
that our greatest foe is not the enemy without but the danger to
democracy within. We realized then that the greatest service we
could render today would be to fight for democracy in this
country.

We are going into this war. We wiU give our service, our
time, our money. We may give our lives and what is harder still,
the lives of those dear to us. We lay them all down upon the
altar for the sake of an ideal. But in laying them down let us
see that the ideal for which we sacrifice shall not perish also.
Let us fight to preserve that ideal, to make this a real democracy.
And, gentlemen, the first step toward that end lies with you here
today. We ask you to take that step and help make this nation
truly a beacon light to nations of the earth.

Although — following the hearing before the Senate Com-
mittee, on May IS^the Chairman, Senator Jones of New
Mexico, was unanimously instructed to make a report on
the Amendment, he failed to do so. When so requested by
the Woman's Party, he refused. After three months the
minority (Republican) leaders of the Committee, led by
Senator Cummins of Iowa, and backed by Senator Jones of
Washington and Senator Johnson of California, attempted
to get the Suffrage Amendment on the Senate Calendar by
discharging the Senate Suffrage Committee from its further
consideration.

306 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

In his own defense, Senator Jones of New Mexico pleaded
lack of time and desire to make a report that would be " a
contribution to the cause." Another Democratic member,
Senator HoUis of New Hampshire, brought forward the
picketing of the Suffragists as a reason for withholding the
report. He expressed the amazing reason for not acting,
his fear that this " active group of Suffragists " would focus
public attention and " get credit." The Chairman of the
Committee who had neglected week after week to make the
report which he had been authorized to make by the Com-
mittee, was finally galvanized into action by a visit to the
imprisoned pickets at Occoquan. Immediately, September
15, he made his report to the Senate. On September 24, the
creation of the House Suffrage Committee came up for
heated debate in the House of Representatives, though its
passage was a foregone conclusion. Of course, there was
much discussion of the picketing which was still going on.
Many of the speakers harped on the note that this late
action in regard to the creation of a committee, which the
Woman's Party had been working for ever since 1913,
would be interpreted by the country as being the result of
the picketing. This was a quaint argument on their part,
because of course, it was the result of the picketing. Why
else would it have come so swiftly?

During this discussion, Mr. Pou, the Chairman, made the
following statement:

I want to say in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, that this is no
proposition to pack the Committee for a particular purpose. The
friends__of this resolution have distinctly stated time and again
that they do not expect action at this session of Congress (first
session of the Sixty-fifth Congress). The appointment of a
Committee only is asked; but after this Committee is appointed,
in the next Congress they expect to go before the people of
America, and if the returns justify, then in the Sixty-sixth
Congress, they will ask for Congressional action.

This boiled down meant of course there was no intention
of passing the Suffrage Amendment before the Sixty-sixth

MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 307

Congress. However, the Administration was to reverse its
policy on this point less than three months later.

The House Suffrage Committee was created by a vote of
one hundred and eighty-one yeas and one hundred and seven
Bays.

PART FOUR
VICTORY

' The vast and beckoning future is ours."

The Suffragist,

THE NEW HEADQUARTERS AND THE
LATER YEARS

At the opening of the year 1918, the Woman's Party made
another change in the location of its headquarters. It will
be recalled that during the first part ,of its history, it had
premises in F Street. In the middle years, it was located
at Cameron House. It was now to go directly across the
Park to 14 Jackson Place. Like Cameron House, this new
mansion had had a vivid and picturesque history. It was
built by the Hon. Levi Woodbury while he was serving in
the cabinet of President Jackson and President Van Buren.
Later, it became the home of Schuyler Colfax, when he was
Vice President. During the Civil War, Postmaster William
Denison, a member of Lincoln's cabinet, lived there. And
perhaps it was at this period that the house achieved the
apex of its reputation for official hospitality. Later, it was
the scene of the tragic triangle of General Sickles, his beau-
tiful young Spanish wife and the brilliant Barton Key. Still
later it fell into the hands of Mrs. Washington McLean, and
then of her grandson's family — the Bughers. Then it was
turned into the Home Club.

It is a charming house. The fa9ade is a pleasing com-
bination of cream-colored tiling trimmed with white. Im-
mediately, of course, the Woman's Party adorned that deli-
cate, lustrous expanse with the red, white, and blue of the
big national banner, which always flies over their Head-
quarters, and the purple, white, and gold of the equally big
Party tri-color. Later, in the little oval made by the porte-
cochere, they erected a bulletin board presented by Mrs.
0. H. P. Belmont. By this means the casual passerby was

311

312 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

kept informed, by bulletin and by photographs, of the ac-
tivities of the Woman's Party.

Inside there are rooms and rooms^ rooms big and small,
rooms of all sizes and heights, A spacious ball-room on the
second floor with a seating capacity of three hundred, was
of course of great practical advantage to the Party. The
other rooms on this floor were made into offices ; the rooms
on the floor above into bedrooms. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and
Mrs. William Kent raised the money for the maintenance
of this huge establishment.

Alice Paul, always economically inclined where expendi-
ture is not absolutely necessary, immediately asked for
contributions of furnishings. All kin^s of things were
given of course, from pianos to kitchen pans. From Mrs.
Pflaster of Virginia came a load of heirlooms, in various
colonial patterns — furniture which makes the connoisseur
positively gasp. Chairs of the Hepplewhite and Sheraton
periods ; tables made by Phyffe ; tables in the most graceful
style of Empire furniture; mahogany cabinets, delicately
inlaid — they gave the place an extraordinary atmosphere.
Huge, dim, old-gold-framed mirrors and a few fine old
paintings reinforced the effect.

Alice Paul's office, which is on the second floor, was done
in purple and gold; the woodwork of gold, the furniture
upholstered in purple velvet.

Later, a large room, originally a stable at the rear of the
fii"st floor, was transformed into a tea-room. Vivian Pierce
had charge of the decorations here; and she made it very
attractive. The brick walls were painted yellow, the tables
and chairs black. The windows and doors were all enclosed
in flat frames of brilliant chintz, of which the background
was black, but the dominating note blue. The many hanging
lights were swathed in yellow silk. The tea-room rapidly
became very popular in Washington; and, as rapidly, be-
came one of the most interesting places in the city. Visitors
of many distinguished kinds came there in preference to the
larger restaurants or hotels. They knew the members of

THE NEW HEADQUARTERS 313

the Woman's Party who lived in the house, and they
gradually came to know the habitues of the tea-room. At
meals, separated parties were always coalescing iato one
big party. People wandered from table to table. There
was an air of comradeship and sympathy. Afterwards,
groups often went up the little flight of stairs which leads
to the ball-room, and sitting before the fire in the huge fire-
place, drank their after-dinner coffee together. These talks
sometimes lasted until midnight.

As for the atmosphere of the place itself — it can be
summed up by only one word, and that word is — ^yduth.
Not that everybody who came to Headquarters was — as
years go— young. There were, for instance, Lavinia Dock
who was sixty, Mary Nolan who was seventy, and the Rev.
Olympia Brown who was an octogenarian. Of course,
though, when one considers that the Rev. Olympia Brown
took part in that rain-drenched and wind-driven picket
deputation of a thousand women on March 4, and that Mary
Nolan and Lavinia Dock both served their terms in prison,
one must admit that they were as young in spirit as the
youngest picket there. But young pickets were there — I
mean, young in actual years ; young and fresh and gay ; able
and daring. Alice Paul, herself, whimsically relates what
an obstacle their very youth seemed to them during the early
part of the movement. When first they began to wage their
warfare on the Democratic Party, old Suffragists rebuked
them ; and rebuked them always on the score that they were
too young to know any better. " How hard we tried to
seem old," Alice Paul said. " On all occasions we pushed
elderly ones into the foreground and when Mrs. Lawrence
Lewis became a grandmother, how triumphant we were. Oh,
we encouraged grandmotherhood in those days." But now —
triumphantly successful — they were no longer afraid of their
own youth. They knew it was their greatest asset. They
made the place ring with Its gaiety. They made it seethe
with Its activity. They made it rock with Its resolution.
" The young are at the gates ! " said Lavinia Dock. And

314 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

these were young who would not brook denial of their
demands.

As you entered Headquarters, that breath of youth struck
you in the face with its wild, fresh sweetness. It was as
pungent as a wind blowing over spring flowers. It was as
vivid as the flash of spring clouds hurrying over the new
blue of the sky. In actuality, youthful activity rang from
every comer of the house. In the white entrance hall, a
young girl sat at the switchboard; and she was always a
very busy person. To the left was the Press Headquarters,
full of that mad turmoil which, seemingly, is inevitable to
any Press activity. Upstairs, Alice Paul was always inter-
viewing or being interviewed; reading letters or answering
them.; asking questions or giving information; snatching a
hurried meal from a tray ; dictating all manner of business ;
or giving the last orders before she darted east, west, north,
or south. She was sure to be doing one of these things, or
some of them, or — ^this really seems not an exaggeration —
all of them.

All about and from the offices that ran beside the ball-room
sounded the click of typewriters — some one counted twenty- /
four typewriters in the house once. Everywhere, you ran
into busy, business-like stenographers with papers in their
hands, proceeding from one office to another. If it were
lunch time, or dinner time, pairs of young girls, with their
arms around each other's waists, chattering busily, were
making their way to the tea-room. At night, the big ball-
room was filled with groups reading magazines at the big
(and priceless) tables; or talking over the events of the day
. . . Congress . . . the picketing. Late at night, the
discussions still went on. Upstairs, they followed each other
from bedroom to bedroom, still arguing, still comparing
notes, still making suggestions in regard to a hundred things :
organizing, lobbying, personal appeal to political leaders, et
caetera, ad infinitum. The huge, four-poster bed — ^big
enough for royalty — in Mrs. Lawrence Lewis's room was
the scene — ^with ardent pickets sitting all over it — of

THE NEW HEADQUARTERS 316

many a discussion that threatened to prolong itself until
dawn.

And all day long, and all evening long — any time— or-
ganizers with their harvests of facts and ideas were likely
to appear from the remotest parts of the country. Young,
enthusiastic, unconscious of bodily discomfort, if the beds
were all full, they pulled a mattress onto the floor and slept
there or curled up on a conch — anything so long as they
could stay at the friendly, welcoming Headquarters. To mid-
dle age, it was all a revelation of the unsounded, unplumbed
depths of endurance in convinced, emancipate, determined
youth. There was no end to their strength apparently.
Apparently there was no possibility of palling their spirit.
Arriving at nine at night from Oregon, they would depart
blithely the next morning at six for Alabama. To those
women who had the privilege of taking part, either as active
participants, or enthralled lookers-on, this will always stand
out as one of their most thrilling life experiences. Kath-
erine Rolston Fisher's fine descriptive phrase in regard to it
all inevitably recurs : " It was," she says, " the renaissance
of the Suffrage movement."

Speed was their animating force : " The Suffrage Amend-
ment passed at once," their eternal motto.

In the nomenclature of the Great War, the pickets were
the shock troops of the Suffrage forces. They took the first
line trenches. The forces of the organization back of them
secured and maintained these positiops; held those trenches
until the time came for the next advance. As for the or-
ganizers working all over the country, they were the air
force and — still using the nomenclature of that great
struggle — ^they were like the little, swift, quickly-turning
chasse-planes which so effectually harassed the huge enemy
machines.

The Woman's Party never grew so big nor its organiza-
tion so cumbrous that its object was defeated by numbers
and weight. It was distinguished always by quality rather
than quantity, and its mechanical organization was sensitive

316 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

and light. It lay over its members as delicately as a cobweb
on the grass ; and it responded as instantly as a cobweb to
the touch of changing conditions. News from Washington
went to the uttermost parts of the country as swiftly as
electricity could bear it. The results in action were equally
swift. That was because youth was everywhere, not only
youth of body, but, perhaps more important, youth of spirit.
Senators and Representatives frequently marveled at the
power and strength of an organization which had come to
fruition in so few years. Had they all visited Headquarters
— as some of them did — I think that all would have under-
stood.

LOBBYING

I HAVE left until now all consideration of a department which
had been, almost from the very beginning, of great impor-
tance to the Woman's Party; the most important depart-
ment of all; the crux of its work; a department which
steadily augmented in importance — the lobbying.

From the moment in 1912 that the Suffragists started
their work in Washington, relations had to be established
with the House and the Senate. At first, tentative, a little
wavering, irregular, the lobbying became finally astute, in-
tensive, and constant. The lobby grew in numbers. After
the Congressional Committee had become the Congressional
Union, and had separated from the National American
Woman Suffrage Association, the latter body sent its own
lobbyists to Washington. The anti-Suffragists sent lobby-
ists too. By 1914, the stream had grown to a flood. The
halls of Congress were never free from this invasion. The
siege lasted without cessation as long as a Congress was in
session. " This place looks like a millinery establishment,"
a Congressman said once.

In the early days, the reception of the lobbyists at the
hands of Congressmen lacked by many degrees that gracious-
ness of which, at the very end, they were almost certain. A
story of this early period taken from the Woman's Party
card index, is most illuminating.

Two Suffrage lobbyists were calling on Hoke Smith. " As
you are Suffragists," Mr. Smith said, "you won't mind
standing." He himself sat, lounging comfortably in his
chair. He took out a big cigar, inserted it in his mouth,
lighted it. The two women said what they had to say,
standing, while Mr. Smith smoked contemptuously on.

317

318 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Those two women were Emily Perry and Jeannette
Rankin.

The lobbying for the Woman's Party was directed at
first by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, Mrs. Gilson Gardner
was the pioneeir lobbyist, and the first-year lobbyists were
all women voters. They made reports to Alice Paul and
Lucy Burns every^ day. First these were oral; later they
were written. This was the nucleus of the Woman's Party
card catalogue which has since become so famous. Finally,
these written reports were put in tabulated form by Mrs-
Grimes of Michigan.

As the work grew, unenfranchised women lobbied as often
as enfranchised. The early lobbyists were: Mrs. Gilson
Gardner, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. George Odell, Lucy
Burns, Abby Scott Baker, Mrs. Lowell Millett. But not
only the experienced lobbied. As has before been set down
— following that wise instinct which impelled Alice Paul to
give her workers glimpses of all phases of the movement —
as fast as the organizers came back to Washington, she
sent them up to the galleries of Congress to listen ; she made
them lobby for a while. And, as has elsewhere been stated,
this was found to be a mutual benefit. Organizers took the
temper and atmosphere of Congress back to the States, and
sometimes to the very constituents of the Congressmen with
whom they had talked ; they put Congressmen in touch with
what was happening at home. Whenever a woman visting
Washington called at Headquarters, Alice Paul immediately
sent her to the Capitol to lobby the Congressmen and Sena-
tors of her own State.

In November, 1916, Anne Martin, as Chairman of the
Legislative Department, became the head of the lobbying.
Miss Martin is a born general. She brought to this situa-
tion an jnstinct for the strategy and tactics of politics. She
supervised the work of those who were under her, sent them
up to Congress with specific directions ; received their re-
ports; collated them; made suggestions for the next day's

LOBBYING 319

work; developed a closer relation with the constituents and
kept local chairmen in touch with the States of their own
Congressmen and Senators. In 1916, Anne Martin ran for
Senator in Nevada. She had of necessity to relinquish active
work in Washington for the Woman's Party.

In the spring of 1916, therefore, Maud Younger who was
in a position to give her whole time to it, became Chairman
of the Lobby Committee and chief lobbyist for the Amend-
ment.

At all times this work was hard, and sometimes intensely
disagreeable. Maud Younger in her Revelations of a
Woman Lobbyist, gives some of the actual physical strain.
She says:

The path of the lobbyist is a path of white marble. And
white marble, though beautiful, is hard. The House office build-
.ing runs around four sides of a block, so that when you have
walked around one floor, you have walked four blocks on white
marble. When you have walked around each of the five floors
you have walked a mile on white marble. When you have gone
this morning and afternoon through several sessions of Congress
you have walked more weary miles on white marble than a
lobbyist has time to count.

But the Woman's Party lobbyists were not balked by the
mere matter of white marble. In a week they were threading
that interminable intricate maze of Congressional alleys with
the light, swift step of familiarity and of determination. All
day long, they drove from the Visitors' Reception Room
to Senatorial offices, and from Senatorial offices back to
the Visitors' Reception Room. They flew up and down in
the elevators. They found unknown and secret stairways by
which they made short cuts. They journeyed back and forth
in the little underground subway which tries to mitigate
these long distances. At first Congressmen frankly took to
hiding, and the lobbyist discovered that the Capitol was a
nest of abris, but in the end, even Congressmen could not
elude the vi^lance of youth and determination. As for the
mental and spiritual difficulties of the task — at first,

320 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Senators and Congressmen were frankly uninterested, or,
more concretely, irritated and enraged with the Suffrage
lobbyists. It is not pleasant to have to talk to a man who
does not want to hear you. The lobbyists had to learn to
be quiet ; deferential ; to listen to long intervals of complaint
and abuse; to seem not to notice rebuffs; to go back the
next day as though the rebuff had not occurred. This is
not easy to women of spirit. Perhaps it could not have been
borne, if it had not been a ,labor of love. Many times these
women had to bolster a smarting sense of humiliation by
keeping the thought of victory in sight.

In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger
tells interestingly and with a very arch touch some of these
experiences :

Mr. Huddleston, the thin, blonde type of Congressman, sat at
his desk in his lo,w-ceilingedj well-lighted office.

" What is it? " he greeted me when I entered. His manner
was very brusque, but I refused to be repelled by it. I began to
speak.

" There's always some one hippodroming around here with
some kind of propaganda," he snapped, interrupting. " We're
very busy, we've got important things to do, we can't be bothered
with Woman Suffrage." He made a jerky motion, rattling the
papers on his desk, and turning his head ito look through the
window. I thought of several things to say to Mr. Huddleston^
but this was obviously the time to say none of them. So I
murmured, " Thank you," and withdrew. . . .

Mr. Whaley's face is red; his head is preihaturely gray out-
side and his thoughts prematurely gray inside. " We don't need
women voting in South Carolina," he said with a large mas-
culine manner. " We know how to take care of our women in
our State. We don't allow divorce for any reason what-
ever."

He was continuing with expressed contempt for Suffrage and
implied contempt for Suffragists, when the door opened and a
negro, evidently a clergyman, entered.

" Get out of here ! " said Mr. Whaley. " You stand in the
haU till you're called." As the negro hastily retreated, Mr.
Whaley turned to me and said with pride, " That's the way to
treat 'em." ...

A few minutes later, I opened Mr. Sisson's door and saw him,

LOBBYING 321

very large and rugged, standing with some letters in his hand
and dictating to a Stenographer.

" I can't discuss that subject," he interrupted at my first
words, and then he discussed it at length. He had meant that
I was not to discuss it. He spoke of women in the kitchen, in
the nursery, in the parlor. He spoke of her tenderness, her
charm, her need for shelter and kindness. Wearily shifting from
one foot to the other, I listened. At last I opened my mouth to
speak, but he silenced me with a brusque gesture.

" The reason I'm so lenient with you," he explained — for he
had allowed me to stand and listen to him — " is because you're

a woman. If you were a man " He left the end of the

sentence in dark doubt. What would he have done to a man
standing dumbly in my place, holding tight to a muff? I shall
never know. Discretion did not allow me to ask him.

Mr. Seed sat at his mahogany desk — a large, rather good-
looking Senator, with gray hair. His record in our card-index
read : " He is most reactionary, not to say antediluvian." So I
was not surprised to hear him say slowly and solemnly:

"Women don't know anything about politics. Did you ever
hear them talking together ? Well, first they talk about fashions,
and children, and housework; and then, perhaps about churches;

and then perhaps — about theatres; and then perhaps " At

each ".perhaps," he gazed down at his finger-tips where his ideas
appeared to originate, looking up at me at each new point.
"And then, perhaps — about literatoor!" he ended trium-
phantly. " Yes, and that is the way it ought to be," he added,
satisfied.

" But don't you believe that voting might make women think? "

At this suggestion he recoiled, then recovered and grew jocose.

" Do you think I want my wife working against my interests ?
That's just what she'd be doing — voting against me. Women
can't understand politics."

I began to teU him about California women voters, but he
interrupted. " Women wouldn't change things if they did vote.
They'd all vote just like their husbands."

Sometimes they said to Miss Younger, " If you were a

voter "

" But I am a voter," Miss Younger, who is from Cali-
fornia, would reply.

Their attitude invariably changed.

Miss Younger comments: "They said they respected

322 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

femininity, but it was plain that they did respect a voter."

It was hard, hard work.

The lobbying was immensely more detailed and compli-
cated than an outsider would ever suspect. All the time, of
course, they were working for the passing of the Anthony
Amendment. That was their great objective, but, as in all
warfare, the campaign for the great objective was divided
into many tiny campaigns. At the beginning of the Con-
gressional Union work in Washington, for instance, they
lobbied Senators and Representatives to march in the big
parade of March 3, 1913. Later they lobbied them to go
to mass-meetings, to attend conventions. In 1916, when they
were having such difficulty with the Judiciary Committee,
they lobbied Republicans and Democratic members of that
Committee to get them to act. By a follow-up system, they
sent other lobbyists in a few days to see if they had acted.
When the Suffrage Envoys came back from the West,
they lobbied Congressn^en to receive them. In the Presi-
dential election of 1916, they lobbied Congress first to get
* Suffrage planks in both Party platforms and when these
planks proved unsatisfactory, they lobbied the Republican
Suffragists in Congress to get Hughes to come out for the
Federal Amendment and when Hughes came out for it, they
lobbied the Democratic Congressmen to get the President to
come out for it. When the Special War Session met, in April,
1917, fifty Woman's Party lobbyists lobbied Congress —
covering it in a month. When the Irish Mission visited Con-
gress, and two hundred and fifty voted for the freedom of
Ireland, they lobbied these Congressmen to vote for the
freedom of women. When the arrests of the pickets began,
they lobbied their Congressmen to go to see their constituents
in jail. The Woman's Party kept track of how Congress-
men voted on different measures and wherever it was pos-
sible, they linked it up with Suffrage. To the Congressmen
who voted against war, they sent lobbyists who could show
what an influence for peace the women could be.
To those who voted for war, they sent the women,

LOBBYING 823

who were war workers, to show how women could work
for war.

Before the six years' .campaign of the Woman's Party was
over, the Republicans were sometimes sending Congressmen
of one State to convert the unconverted ones of another,
and, in the end, the young Democratic Senators had actually
appointed a comn^ttee to get Suffrage votes from their older
confreres. After Congress passed the Amendment, they lob-
bied the Congressmen to write the governors to call special
sessions of the Legislature in the interests of ratification ;
then they lobbied them to write the Legislators; then they
lobbied them to write political leaders.

Perhaps the hardest interval in their work was that which
followed the campaign of 1916. Wilson had been elected
again on the slogan, "He kept us out of war." The Re-
publicans did not want to hear anything about the women
voters of the West. The Woman's Party lobbyists, who
were often more informed on the Republican situation in
parts of the West than were the Republicans themselves,
had to educate them. They had to show them how remiss
the Republicans themselves had been during that campaign,
how Hughes for instance came out for Suffrage in the East,
where women did not vote, and never mentioned it in the
West, where they did. It was not easy work. Sometimes
Congressmen would take up papers or letters and examine
them, while the lobbyist was talking. Nevertheless, she
would continue. And then, inevitably the degree of her in-
formation, her clear and forceful exposition of the situation,
would arouse interest. Often in the end, the erstwhile in-
different Congressman would shake hands and bow her out.

As to the mechanics of lobbying work, perhaps nothing is
more interesting than the cards themselves of the famous
card-index.

No. 1 — Contains the member's name and his biography as
contained in the Congressional Directory.
No. 2 — ^A key card has these headings:

324 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Ancestry, Nativity, Education, Religion, Offices Held, General
Information.

No. S — ^A sub-card under the foregoing, as are those yet to be
given, contains these headings: Birth, Date, Place, Number of
Children, Additional Information.

Nos. 4, 5, and 6 — ^Are respectively for Father, Mother,
Brothers. They have headings to elicit full information on these
subjects, as Nativity, Education, Occupation.

No. 7 — Education: Preparatory School and College.

No. 8 — Religion: Name of Church, Date of Entrance, Position
Held in Church, Church Work.

No. 9 — Military Service: Dates, Offices, Battles, Additional
Information.

No. 10 — Occupation: Past, Present.

No. 11 — Labor Record.

Nos. 12 and 18 — ^Are set aside for Literary Work and Lecture
Work.

No. 14 — Newspapers: Meaning what newspapers the member
reads and those that have the most influence over him.

Nos. 15 and 16 — ^Are respectively for Recreation and Hobbies.

Nos. 17 and 18 — ^Are devoted to Health and Habits.

No. 19 — Political Life Prior to Congress: Offices Held.
Whether Supported Prohibition Amendment, Offices Run For.

No. 20 — Political life in Congress: Terms, Date, Party, Bills
Introduced, Bills Supported, Committees.

No. 21 — Suffrage Record: Outside of Congress, In Congress.

No. 22 — Votes cast in Election of Member.

In an interview in the New York Times of March 2, 1919,
Miss Younger describes the working of this system.

If a Congressman said to a lobbyist, for instance, " I do not
think my district is much interested in Woman Suffrage^ I get
very few letters in favor of it from my constituents," then,
immediately, by means of the information gained through the
card-index, a flood of pro-Suffrage letters would descend upon
him. Always, as far as possible, these letters would come from
people he knew or who were influential.

If a Congressman had a financial backer, they tried to get at
him. If he were from a strong labor district, they appealed to
Labor to bring its influence to bear upon him.

When the lobbyist started for Congress, she was given a
lobbying slip which had a list of entries printed on it. For
instance, one heading was " Exact statements and remarks."

LOBBYING 325

Miss Younger told me of one Congressman who said to heri
" Put me down on the mourners' bench. I am thinking about
it." Immediately Headquarters became very busy with this
Congressman.

Another said, "Women in my State do not want it." Miss
Younger, commenting on that, said that it was always an en-
couraging case. We see immediately that he gets shoals of letters
and telegrams from his State. One Congressman on whom such
a campaign was waged said finally: " If you will only stop, I
will vote for the Amendment. It keeps my office force busy all
day answering letters about Suffrage alone."

The hardest Congressmen to deal with were those who said,
" I will not vote for it if every voter in my State asks me." To
such a one, we would send a woman from his own district. In
one case, the Congressman was so rude to her that she came
back to Headquarters, subscribed a hundred dollars to our funds,
departed, and became a staunch Suffragist. We kept a list of
men of this type and we sent to them any woman who was
wavering on Suffrage. It never failed to make her a strong
Suffragist.

Any bit of information on these cards might be used. If a
man played golf, that might be a happy moment for a member
of the Woman's Party to talk Suffrage with him. If he had the
kind of mother who was an influence in his life, they tried to
convert the mother. If it was the wife who was the ruling
influence, they tried to convert the wife. They were careful even
in regard to brothers. The habits of Congressmen as disclosed
by this index were of great importance. Some of them got to
their office early, and that was often the best time to speak with
them. If a Congressman drank, it was necessary to note that.
Then when the lobbyists found him muddled and inarticulate,
they knew to what to impute it.

Of course information of a blackmailing order was occasionally
offered from outside sources to the Woman's Party, but, of '
course, this was always ignored.

From 1916 on, the years in which Maud Younger was in
charge of the lobby committee, twenty-two Senators changed
their position in favor of Suffrage.

I have said that it was difficult for a Congressman to elude
these swift and determined scouts of the Woman's Party.
But harder still was it to elude a something, an unknown
quality — an x — which had come into the fourth generation

326 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

of women to demand enfranchisement. That quality was
political-mindedness. Congressmen had undoubtedly before
run the gamut of feminine persuasiveness; grace; charm;
tact. But here was an army of young Amazons who looked
them straight in the eye, who were absolutely informed, who
knew their rights, who were not to be frightened by bluster,
put off by rudeness, or thwarted either by delay or political
trickery. They never lost their tempers and they never gave
up. They never took " No " for an answer. They were
young and they believed they could do the impossible. And
believing it, they accomplished it. Before the six years and
a half of campaign of the Woman's Party was over, Con-
gressman after Congressman, Senator after Senator paid
tribute — often a grudged one — to the verve and elan of that
campaign.

But though they talked man fashion, eye to eye, the lob-
byists, when returned to Headquarters, were full of excellent
information and suggestions and all that mysterious by-
product which comes from feminine intuition.

Ill

ORGANIZING

Although it is impossible to do justice to any department
of the National Woman's Party, it seems particularly dif-
ficult in the case of the organizers. The reason for this is
not far to seek. These young women were, turned loose,
sometimes quite inexperienced; sometimes only one to a
State, with the injunction to come back with their shield
or on it. They always came back with their shield — that is
to say an organization of some sort in the State they had
just left. As has been before stated, the National Woman's
Party has organized in every State in the Union at some
time during its history — ^that is between the years 1912 and
1919. As has also been stated, the organizers divided into
three groups — those who worked in the first two years ; ihpse
who worked in the middle two; those who worked in the
last two.

It has been shown with what • careful instruction Alice
Paul sent these young adventurers into the wide wide world
of unorganized States ; but perhaps justice has not been done
to the trust she placed in them and the consequent extraor-
dinary results. She kept in close telegraphic communication
with them all the time — and yet always, she left them free
to make big decisions and sudden changes in policy. " She
made us feelthat we could do it in the first place," one of
them said to me, " and somehow we did. That sense we had
of her — ^brooding and hovering back there in Washington —
always gave us courage; always gave us the physical
strength to do the things we did and the mental strength to
make the decisions we made."

As one looks through the lists of these three groups of
prganizers, one is astounded at the various kinds of work

327

328 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

they did; their versatility. Mabel Vernon for instance.
Her activities form an integral part of the Woman's Party
history. Mabel Vernon traveling ahead of Sara Bard Field
in her spectacular automobile trip across the country, was
more responsible than anybody, except Mrs. Field herself,
for the success of that trip. Mabel Vernon challenged the
President in the course of his speech at the laying of the
corner-stone of the new Headquarters of the Ambrican Fed-
eration of Labor in Washington. Mabel Vernon was one
of the women who dropped the banner in the Senate when
the President came to speak before them. Mabel Vernon
picketed and went to jail. Mabel Vernon seems to have
organized or spoken in every State in the Union.

Elsie Hill, Doris Stevens — you find them everywhere,
luminous spirits with a new modern adjunct of political-
mindedness. Abby Scott Baker was always on the wing.

One's mind stops at the names of Vivian Pierce, Lucy
Branham, Mary Gertrude Fendall, Hazel Hunkins. How
many and what vaj-ying and difficult things they did ! Vivian
Pierce in addition to speaking and organizing and picketing
activities, ^edited the Suffragist, and designed the charming
tea-room at Headquarters. As for Lucy Branham — she
must have seemed a stormy petrel to all opposing forces — she
had so much the capacity of being everywhere at once.

When one comes to the last group, a sense — almost of
awe — is leavened by a decided sense of amusement. Julia
Emory, Betty Gram, Anita PoUitzer, Mary Dubrow, Cath-
erine Flanagan are all little girls. But in Suffrage work,
they were active, insistent, and persistent in inverse ratio
to their size. In ratification, that legislature was doomed
on which any two of them descended.

What they accomplished! Once Alice Paul turned Anita
Pollitzer loose on the entire State of Wyoming and Anita
Pollitzer brought Wyoming into camp. It is impossible to
do justice to all of them, to any of them. But as an example
of how they worked, I am quoting from letters written by
Anita Pollitzer describing various experiences in her work

ORGANIZING 329

of organization. I use Miss PoUitzer's letters, not because
tRey are exceptional but because they are typical. Space
will not permit me to do equal justice to any of the others.
But perhaps some day all those marvelous narratives will be
collected. Miss PoUitzer writes me as follows:

Wyoming

" Campaign against the party in power " — ^late October, 1918
—snow on the ground and no friends in the State — ^traveled
miles to get help of most influential woman, found her lying on
the floor of a church with brass tacks and a hammer — She
said she was " chairman of the committee on laying carpets in
the church," and that was all she could undertake.

Ch^enne wonderfully beautiful — ^plains — ^most exceptional
place for campaign purposes — forty minutes between street cars
— snow miles high and every woman demanding a separate visit.
Influenza epidemic so bad that it was considered immoral for
six women to meet in a parlor — only way was to campaign by
dodgers and street signs — Got permission from owner of build-
ing to put a forty foot purple, white, and gold sign, suspended
it from the most prominent building — Town literally gathered
in groups to see it — I got up next morning at seven and sign
was down — I had " antagonized " — so I went to call on the
Mayor and we toured the town, and rehung the sign on an even
more important street, and I had double publicity, the Mayor
taking full responsibility for the sign even inquiring if it
would " run in the rain."

Such fearful snow, could get no billboard men to put up my
big paper signs outside of the cities, and I wanted them on
cross-country roads. I met a woman delivering newspapers,
explained our campaign and my difliculties, and she offered us
her eighteen-year-old daughter and a box of stickers, and we
tramped the automobile roads and papered the tree trunks —
Posters.

This is my first National Woman's Party trip. Wyoming a
real adventure — South where I have always lived (Charleston,
South Carolina) so utterly unlike — When I went out to mail
my thousands of circular letters each night at two a.m. funny
Filipino bell boys and other kinds would escort me and carry
the thousands of circular letters to mail box. Local post-oflice
really asked me to be " more considerate."

330 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

South Carolina

Getting Senator Pollock's vote seemed largely a question of
getting the farmers of South Cardlina. If Pollock (the Pro-
gressive) was to beat Senator Smith (the Reactionary) he must
please the farm element.

So I journeyed out to Mayesville — arrived on hog-killing day
— at the house of Dabs — impressive person, leading farmer of
South Carolina. We ate all day, and sat around a glorious fire,
and in the afternoon Mr. Dabs wrote a letter that he gave me
to take to town to mail that helped more than we'll ever know.
In the letter Dabs spoke for the farmers, urged Pollock to declare
for the Suffrage Amendment, and ended, " We farmers are doing
little talking but a lot of thinking."

I always believed if Pollock voted, he would vote " Yes." But
Mrs. William P. Vanghan of Greenville, our State Chairman,
and I tramped the State up and down, saying, " There'll be no
vote — unless Pollock declares."

Finally one night Senator Pollock's secretary appeared at my
hotel in Columbia, and he said, " Don't say again that Pollock
is defeating Suffrage by delay." I said, " Well, then, get him to
declare." He said, " I'm going to Washington, going tomorrow.
Good night. We will have a surprise for you within a week —
within three days." And at once, after weeks and weeks of cam-
paigning. Senator Pollock of South Carolina broke the Conserva-
tive record of his State, declared " Yes," and voted " Yes," on
the freedom of American women.

When it was all over — his vote and our campaign to get him
to declare — I came back to Washington, had lunch with him at
the Capitol, and sat, while he told me of the numerous people
in South Carolina who had asked him to vote " Yes ! " " You'll
never know the sentiment that exists in South Carolina," was all
he said. But I felt we knew.

Florida

Getting the South Florida Press Association at its annual
meeting to endorse the Federal Suffrage Amendment was mar-
velous fun — I learned that Senator Trammell had gotten solid
support from two counties, and owed this support to a man named
Goolsby — editor. So I hired a car and made for Goolsby. He
is a very powerful newspaper man. We sat around a log fire,
with the wife, a parrot, and a cat, and finally he said he was

ORGANIZING 331

going in two days to a meeting of the South Florida Press
Association, and that he was President. I said, " I'm going too."
He said, " Well, there's hope while there's life — ^they're against
you, but you can try." I felt that we could do it, talked it all
over with him, and said that I would be down to put the resolu-
tion in regardless of the results — but that I knew it could pass.

Two days seemed like years. At daybreak — five — I climbed
in a Ford and arrived at the Press Conference at ten. Goolsby
was the only one I knew. He introduced me to the Resolutions
Committee. I sat through speeches and speeches. At noon came
a luncheon. The Chairman of the Resolutions Committee took me
to that. Then an auto ride all through the orange groves — we
got out and picked them, talking Suffrage all the while. Only the
Resolutions Committee and I were in the car. The Chairman of
the Committee finally said out of a clear sky to the elderly
gentleman at my left — a strong anti — " I believe we ought to
pass a resolution or something, don't you, thanking Miss PoUitzer
for coming? " — all in joke. I said: " No, but you ought to pass
a resolution urging your own Florida Senators to stand behind
President Wilson. They're not." He said, " They should." I
said, " Well, let's pass it." So in the car, speeding along, thanks
to the marvelously smooth roads and my luncheon friend — we
wrote the resolution. The old editor said, " What."* Suffrage! "
My young one said, " Yes ; Suffrage ; standing back of President
Wilson." When we got back, my old editor said : " Say, let's
make that strong — we've got to go on record unmistakably for
Wilson." He worked — Goolsby worked — of course the young
one worked. I sat and ate oranges. It was all done — in less
than fifteen minutes. The Resolutions Committee reported out a
glorious resolution, calling on Senators Trammell and Fletcher
to support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and it passed
unanimously. The Resolution read: "Be it resolved that we
stand with President Wilson in his advocacy of Woman Suffrage,
and we urge our Representatives in Congress to vote for the en-
franchisement of women ! ! ! "

The most exciting adventure of my life was " holding up the
Florida legislature " till midnight so Governor Catts could send a
resolution in asking Trammell and Fletcher (Senators) to vote
for Suffrage. I saw Senator Trammell in Washington, and he
said he had not decided how he would vote on the Amendment.
That his vote would represent " the people " — I asked him if in
our government a State legislature didn't represent " the will of
the people." He said, " Yes, but I don't intend to instruct my
legislature." I said: " No, but maybe your legislature will

332 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

instruct you." I came home and told Miss Paul, who said,
" Will you go down to Florida tonight? " and Bertha Arnold and
I went. Helen Hunt, a capable young Jacksonville lawyer,
joined us, and the campaign began.

It was absolutely essential to get Governor Catts to send in
the Resolution, as messages from the Governor only took a ma-
jority— others a two-third vote, but we didn't want this too
soon. When we had our votes all there in the Senate, the leader,
anti, moved that no new business not already in by noon, could
come up at all — ^the legislature barring everything, to save them-
selves from Suffrage. This was fearful, as the House was most
difficult, and we had planned to attack the Senate first. At four
o'clock the last afternoon of the special session, called simply to
discuss prohibition, we flew to the Governor's office. Helen
Hunt, a senator, a member of the House, and I got Governor
Catts to say he'd send a message at once. 4<.S0 came — 5.30
came — no message. In terror, I flew down. The Governor's
oflice was locked — I got one of the House to move a night session
— we lobbied for that, it carried. The Night Session began at
eight — Governor Catts still nowhere to be found. Finally, after
phoning his home every five minutes it seemed — I called at ten
and they said, " Governor Catts is in bed." — I said we had to
have him. The person who answered the phone said nothing
could be done. His secretary had the ofiice keys; he was ill at
home; his stenographer had the desk keys; she was at a movie.
These obstacles to be overcome, and Governor Catts to be rushed
to the Capitol. I flew back to our night session at the Capitol.
I sent in a little slip-Written message to Mr. Stokes, saying:
" Trust us — you said you'd help — ^keep this session going —
filibuster — do anything — don't let them adjourn." I stood in tile
door and saw him nod " All right," and flew.

Bertha Arnold in a taxi secured the outer key from the secre-
tary— ^after arousing secretary and encountering a storm.

Helen Hunt in another taxi called for Governor Catts, waited
till he got up from bed and dressed, and brought him and his
daughter, Ruth, to the Capitol. I meanwhile stopped at a
Western Union Office and got a messenger boy. He said, " What
am I t(^ take?" I said, "Me!" He knew the way, and to-
gether we ran through the streets of Tallahassee at midnight,
covered every movie, and had the stenographer paged — brought
her and her escort to the Capitol — produced the desk keys — got
the resolution. Never was any sound more marvelous than Gov-
ernor Catts' thud when he walked up those Capitol steps at mid-
night— ^instantly he rushed it up — ^the door of the House opened

ORGANIZING 333

— there stood my man Stokes, talking and hoarse. He had kept
them there. The secretary announced, " Message from the Gov-
ernor," and our resolution was read !

The vote was closer than close — didn't pass, but they had to
stay till the next day at two — we stayed too, and in the morning
— of the last day — we got a majority petition from the Florida
legislature which showed Trammell and Fletcher that Florida
wanted their Suffrage votes.

When I heard that Senator Trammell was arriving in Lakeland,
I wired Miss Paul I would stay — Such a hectic and great day.
I saw him with four antis in the hotel lobby. He looked dumb-
founded, shook hands, discussed the climate, and acted as though
I were touristing because Florida was beautiful-r-but he knew.

Then I went out of his life — but sent others in — all day I got
out little delegations to him — ^the State Senator from that dis-
trict— his minister — president of the Bank — ^leading Labor man
— his editor. Mr. Trammell's one day in Lakeland was a
Woman's Party event. I asked Mr. Smailes — a strong Labor
vobA — boyhood friend of Trammell's, to see him. That night
they all came to me at the hotel and each reported his achieve-
ment with Park Trammell.

Smailes said : " I looked at him and said, ' Park — it's funny
you can't see it and those you were brought up with all can,' and
Park loqked at me, and he said, ' Well, there's one thing worry-
ing me a little. I don't want women to get more than their share
of electors.' I just looked at him, and I said: ' Park, you know
Mrs. Smailes don'i want more than her share, but she ain't got
her share yet; that s what she's asking for.' "

I said, " Mr. Smailes, what do you think that Senator Tram-
mell will do ? " He said, " I don't know. I've known him since
we were babies, but he's a Senator now."

Helen Hunt met Trammell in Jacksonville when he arrived —
on his " one day " to Lakeland. He said, " Where is she? "
(meaning me). "Is she still in the State.?" (Miss Younger
thinks this funny because it shows how scared they are of the
Woman's Party — even one of us.)

Virginia

I think our hotel experiences are so funny.

We had a terrible time getting any one to consider taking action
on Suffrage ratification at the Special Session. Virginia legis-
lature called just for good roads — I went to Roanoke to see

334 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

floor-leader Willis (strongest Suffragist in the House) and he
announced he was scheduled himself to introduce a bill saying
that nothing but good roads would come up. After a morning's
work with Willis, he decided he would bring up Suffrage pro-
vided Senator Trinkle agreed. He promised to see Trinkle the
next morning, so I decided I'd better see Trinkle that night.
Fortunately a train was leaving in ten minutes. I arrived at
Wytheville at nine p.m. It was black. Senator Trinkle was on
the platform. I picked him out because he was the biggest man
obviously and I asked where Senator Trinkle lived and he said,
" I am Senator Trinkle." When my interview was at an end
and it was fixed, he said that the last train out had left, and
that I should go to the hotel, and say to the owner that he said
to give me the best room. To my great consternation, the hotel
proprietor escorted me into a room the size of a young stable,
which contained six beds, explaining, " This is our best room.
I'll call it a single room for tonight." Never can I describe the
creaks of the empty five beds all night long. It doesn't sound
funny, but it was — I and six beds, some of them double, and a box
of Uneeda crackers and Hershey's milk chocolate.

The way we got the University of Virginia mass-meeting- was
amusing. I taught art at the University of Virginia Summer
School. We had just staged a big pageant at the University.
Director Maphis was grateful and said he'd do anything I
wanted. That afternoon. Senator Martin arrived in Charlottes-
ville, his home, and so I went to see Mr. Maphis to tell him I
wanted Cabell Hall, the real University of Virginia Hall, and
he said, " Yes." I phoned Miss Paul and she sent Lucy Bran-
ham — we advertised with huge sheets on the front of each of the
eight street cars, in Charlottesville and hand-made slides at
movies and posters that my Art classes all were given to do as a
" problem."

The Hall was full and the wonderful old Jeffersonian Uni-
versity held its first Federal Suffrage Mass Meeting and passed
resolutions urging Senator Martin to vote for the Amendment.
Lucy Branham and I drove to his home the next morning, pre-
sented him with the resolutions, and described the meeting of his
own constituents to him.

Here perhaps is the place to describe the work of the
Political Department, of which Abby Scott Baker was Chair-
man. The Political Department supplemented the work
of the Legislative and Organization Departments. When-

ORGANIZING 336

ever the work of the National Woman's Party demanded
instant pressure on Congress and on State Legislatures,
Alice Paul despatched Mrs. Baker at once to the power who
could exert that pressure. She was a kind of perpetual
flying envoy for the Woman's Party.

THE PRESIDENT CAPITULATES AND THE
HOUSE SURRENDERS

It will be remembered that after the eight months in
which the Woman's Party picketed the President, the House
of Representatives created a Suifrage Committee in Septem-
ber, 1917. It will also be remembered that during the dis-
cussion on the floor, in regard to that Committee, Mr.
Pou, Chairman, made the statement that there was no inten-
tion of passing the Amendment before the Sixty-sixth Con-
gress. That Congress adjourned on October 6, 1917. Also,
it will be remembered that that day, Alice Paul marched
over to the White House gates carrying a banner inscribed
with the words of the President:

THE TIME HAS COME WHEN WE MUST CONaUEE OK SUBMIT.
FOR us THERE CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.

It will be remembered too that Alice Paul was arrested
and sentenced to seven months in jail.

Following the publicity which came from the Woman's
Party speakers all over the country and from the news-
papers, protests of all descriptions began to pour into the
White House and to the Democratic leaders: letters, resolu-
tions, petitions.

Again it will be remembered that a week before Congress
reconvened on December 3, 1917, all the imprisoned women
were suddenly released.

In the new Session — a direct reversal of Mr. Pou's an-
nouncement of two months earlier that the House would not
pass the Amendment before 1920 — a day was set for the vote

336

THE PRESIDENT CAPITULATES 337

on the Suffrage Amendment, a week after Congress assem-
bled.

Again, it should be pointed out that all these things hap-
pened after those eight months of picketing.

That important day which the House set was January 10,
1918. In September, the Suffragists lacked seventy-three
votes of the passage of the Amendment. Naturally all De-
cember was spent in working up that vote. The National
Woman's Party secured statements from Republican leaders
like Mondell and Kahn, stating the strong Republican sup-
port of the measure and blaming the Democrats if it were
defeated. The National Woman's Party worked up the
Republican majority from three-quarters of the House to
five-sixths. The Democrats began to be frightened at the
press statements of the Republicans. They began to work
to increase their showing, as they feared the country would
blame them if the Amendment were defeated.

But more important than any of these things was the
capitulation of the President which won, as the Woman's
Party contended it would, the necessary votes in the house.
On January 9, 1919, one year from the day the Inez Milr
holland Memorial Deputation visited him. President Wilson
made his declaration for the Federal Amendment, and on
January 10, the Amendment was passed in the House by a
vote of two hundred and seventy-four to one hundred and
thirty-six.

This important epoch ip the history of the Suffrage Move-
ment, Maud Younger describes in her Revelations of a
Woman Lobbyist.

The atmosphere had changed when I returned to Washington.
Republican Congressmen had suddenly realized what an asset to
the Republican Party would be their support of Suffrage. Demo-
crats, seeing the blame that would attach to them for its defeat,
were becoming alarmed.

" The country is fixing to blame the Democrats," said Mr.
Hull, of Tennessee, very thoughtfully, but not quite thought-
fully enough. As a member of the National Executive Com-

338 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

mittee of the Democratic Party he was thoughtful. As a Con-
gressman with a vote in the House he was not quite thoughtful
enough.

We lacked sixty votes in the House, and had only three weeks
to get them. We worked day and night. Our friends in Con-
gress, brightly hopeful, told us we had votes to spare, but we
knew the truth. We lacked forty votes, then twenty, then ten,
but we kept this to ourselves. Unless something happened we
could not win.

Then, on January 9, the day before the vote, it happened.
Late on that afternoon the President invited a deputation of
Democratic Congressmen to wait on him. Knowing of the ap-
pointment, we went through the halls of Congress, on wings, all
day. When the Congressmen went into the White House, a small
group stood outside in the snow waiting for the first word of that
interview. After what seemed an interminable time, the doors
opened. Out came cheery Mr. Baker with the news : " The
President has declared for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment,
and will stay home from his game of golf tomorrow morning to
see any Congressman who wishes to consult him about it." Thus,
just a year from the day he had told us we must concert public
opinion. President Wilson declared for Suffrage.

There was a feeling of victory in the air as we went through
the corridors that night. Yet our secret poll showed that we
still lacked votes. We could do nothing more. We could only
wait and see how much force the President would put behind his
declaration.

Scrub women were still at work with brushes and buckets of
soapsuds when I reached the Capitol that fateful morning.
From the front row of the gallery we looked down on the floor
of the House, with its seven rows of empty seats rising in semi-
circular rows like an amphitheatre. A few people scurried here
and there, the galleries were rapidly filling. We watched the
Congressmen come in, sit down, walk about, or stand in groups
talking and looking up at the galleries.

At the stroke of eleven all eyes turned toward the door of the
Speaker's lobby. Chattering ceased. The door opened, and a
Roman mace appeared and advanced, supported by the Deputy
Sergeant-at-Arms, who held it in his two hands before him.
Very solemn, very mindful of his step, he ascended the three
steps to the Speaker's stand, followed by the Speaker, Champ
Clark, dignified and magnificent in a tan frock coat, with a
white flower in the buttonhole. Having ascended, the Sergeant-
at-Arms laid the mace against the wall where all the Congressmen

TPiE PRESIDENT CAPITULATES 339

could look at it, and came down again with a little skip on the
last step, while the Speaker impressively faced the House.

Prayer and routine business finished, the speeches began.
Most of them were prosy and dull, delivered not for those who
heard them, but for constituents hundreds of miles away. In
the galleries we listened wearily. We had brought luncheon with
us, which we ate as unobstrusively as possible. We would lose
our seats if we left them^ for through the ground-glass doors we
dimly saw waiting multitudes trying to come in. All day the
largest crowds the doorkeepers had ever known pressed against
the doors. Inside the speeches droned on.

" What a dull ending for such a dramatic struggle," said a
newspaper man, leaning over from the press gallery. I could
have wished it had been duller, for we never for an instant forgot
we still lacked votes. We did not know how far the President's
message had carried since our last possible poll.

Suddenly a wave of applause and cheers swept over the floor.
Every head turned toward the Speaker's door, and there, on the
threshold, we saw Mr. Mann> pale and trembling. For six
months he had lain in a hospital — his only visitors his wife and
secretary. It had been said that he would never come back to
the House. Yet he had come to vote for our Amendment.

Now, through the skylight, we could see that the afternoon
had gone, and evening had come. At last the time for speech-
making ended and the vote was taken. Forty years to a day from
the first introduction of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in
Congress, one year exactly from the time the first picket-line went
to stand before the White House, the Federal SufiPrage Amend-
ment passed the House of Representatives. It passed with just
one vote to spare. Six votes came to us through the President.
He had saved the day!

Outside the doors of the gallery a woman began to sing,
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Others took it up,
more and more voices joined, and through the halls of the
Capitol there swelled our song of gratitude. Louder and louder
it rose and soared to the high arches, and was carried out into
the night to die away at last in the far distances. And still in
our hearts we sang, Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

But our minds were not at rest, nor our thoughts quiet. Our
victory was worth nothing unless we could consolidate it quickly.
To do this we had to win the Senate. And the Senate is farther
from the people than the House, and much, much harder to move.

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE

The House of Representatives passed the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment on January 10, 1918, by a vote of two hundred
and seventy-four to one hundred and thirty-six. The work
of the Woman's Party was now concentrated on the Senate.
They needed only eleven votes there, and many Suffragists
were optimistic — they thought victory a matter of but a
few weeks. The Woman's Party knew better. However, in
the siege of the Senate, they continued their policy — to work
downwards through the President, and upward through con-
stituents and political leaders from the people.

In summing up the situation in the Senate, Alice Paul
said:

If the Republicans had the vision to see that it was a wise
Party policy to secure the credit for the passage of the Amend-
ment in the House, and the Democrats believed it an unwise
Party policy to be responsible for its defeat — the same argument
must hold for the vote in the Senate, for while more than two-
thirds of the Republicans had already promised their votes, only
half the Democrats are at present pledged in the Senate.

The effect of the passing of the Susan B. Anthony Amend-
ment in the House was, however, not only profound, but im-
mediate. In February, the Republican National Committee
met in St. Louis for the selection of a Chairman. Abby
Scott Baker appeared before the committee, urging a favor-
able stand on the Susan B. Anthony amendment. Two women
representing the anti-Suffragists were also to speak. How-
ever, when the anti-Suffragist speakers presented themselves
before the Committee, they found that it had already voted a
resolution commending the stand of the Republican members

340

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 341

of the House of Representatives in favor of the Suffrage
Amendment. This was the first favorable expression of the
National Republican Party on the question of Federal
Suffrage.

Minnie Bronson said of jbhe anti-Suffragist members:

I looked round for the thirty members who last night were
opposed to Suffrage. I wonder what changed them over night.

Lucy Price, also an anti-Suffragist, asserted:

Your action without even hearing us was worse than a be-
trayal of us who are opposed to Suffrage. It was an admission
that Party pledges are meant to be broken.

The Executive Committee of the Democratic National
Committee, which met that same day in Washington, held a
telegraphic referendum of their entire national committee on
the question of the Amendment. It is interesting to note
that this was done at the instance of the Democratic woman
who had charge of the Democratic campaign among women
in 1916, when the Woman's Party made Suffrage the great
issue. This telegraphic referendum showed more than a two
to one desire for the national committee to take action that
would put it on record as " urging the support " of the
Amendment. The Executive Committee, therefore, adopted
the resolution, endorsing the Federal Suffrage measure, and
by a vote of five to two, calling upon the Senate to act at
once favorably upon it.

For months thereafter, the Woman's Party concentrated
on obtaining the necessary eleven votes in the Senate. It
was a period of comparative calm. There was no militant
action of any kind. The pickets had all been released in
December, and, although the appeal cases were coming up
in the courts at intervals, picketing seemed an abandoned
weapon.

In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger
describes very delightfully how the first nine votes were
obtained :

342 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

" We should get Senator Phelan now," said Miss Paul. " He
opposed Federal Suffrage because the President did. Now that
the President has come out for it. Senator Phelan should do so.
Send for him."

I sent in my card and he came at once, very neat in a cut-
away coat, his eyes smiling above his trimmed sandy beard.
" Of course I'll vote for the Amendment," he said, as though he
had never thought of anything else. He was plainly glad to
have an excuse for changing his position.

" That leaves ten to get," said Miss Paul. " Let's go and see
Senator McCumber." The Senator from North Dakota is sandy
and Scotch and cautious, and, like many other Senators, thinks
it would be weak and vacillating to change his opinion.

" I voted against it in 1914. I cannot vote for it in 19I8,"
he said. " I cannot change my principles."

" But you can change your mind ? "

" No, I could not do that."

" Then you might change your vote," said I, urging progress.
He, too, saw progress, but was wary of it. Looking cautioiisly
around the room and back of us, he said slowly, " If the legis-
lature of my State should ask me to vote for it, I would feel
obliged to do so."

That same night Beulah Amidon telegraphed to North Dakota,
— her own State — to the Chairman of the Republican Party and
the Non-Partisan League that controls the Legislature; to her
father. Judge Amidon, and to others. The Legislature immedi-
ately passed a resolution calling on Senator McCumber to vote
for our Amendment. Miss Amidon went to see him at once, with
the news.

" But I haven't seen how the resolution is worded yet," said
Senator McCumber cannily. ,

When the resolution arrived some one else went to see him.

" I want to look it over carefully," he said. When he had
looked it over carefully, he admitted, " I will vote for the
Amendment. But to show' loyalty both to constituents and
principle," he added hastily, " I will speak against it, and vote
for it."

" That leaves nine to get," said Miss Paul, counting Senator
McCumber off on her little finger and turning to a list of other
legislatures in session. The difiiculty was that the legislatures
in session did not fit the Senators whose votes we must get.
Mildred Glines, our Rhode Island chairman, was at our Head-
quarters, and Senator Gerry of Rhode Island was at the Capitol,
and not for our Amendment. So Mildred Glines set out at once

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 343

for Rhode Island, where she had a resolution presented and
passed, and returned with it to Senator Gerry.

Then I went to see his colleague. Senator Colt. A scholarly-
looking man, he sat at his desk deep in some volume of ancient
lore. Arguing with himself while I sat listening, he stated the
case for Suffrage and Senator Gerry. " But on the other hand,"
he said — and then stated the other side.

" Yes," he concluded deliberately, but with a twinkle in his
eye, " Peter will vote for it."

" That leaves eight to get," said Miss Paul, very thoughtfully.
" Have you seen Senator King lately .^ "

Though Senator King is not unpleasant to talk with, if one
does not broach subjects controversial, persons who appealed to
his reason had succeeded only in ruffling his manners. He
smiled blandly and, leaning back in his chair, began what he
believed to be a perfect case. " I've always been opposed to
national Suffrage. I said so in my campaign, and the people
elected me."

We must appeal to his constituents. But how? His Legisla-
ture was not in session. Alice Henkle went post-haste to Utah,
and at once newspapers began to publish editorials; all sorts of
organizations, civic, patriotic, religious, educational, social, began
to pass resolutions. Letters poured in upon Senator King. But
always Miss Henkle wrote us, " They tell me everywhere fiiat ifs
no use; that Senator King is so 'hard-shelled' that I might as
well stpp."

" Go to the Capitol and see," said Miss Alice Paul.

I had just entered the revolving door when Senator Sheppard,
hurrying past, stopped to say, " Do you know King is coming
around! I think we may get his vote."

So Miss Paul wired Alice Henkle that night: " Redouble
efforts. They are having good effect." Four weeks later, three
Senators told me that Senator King had said in the cloak room,
" I'm as much opposed to Federal Suffrage as ever, but I think
I'll vote for it. My constituents want me to."

" That leaves six to get," said Miss Paul, " counting Senator
Culberson too." For while we had been busy in Washington,
Doris Stevens and Clara Wolfe had been busy in Texas on the
trail of Senator Culberson.

The national committees of both political parties had taken a
stand for Federal Suffrage in February. Also, Colonel Roosevelt
and other Republican leaders were writing to Senators whose
names we furnished, urging their support.

" Now," said Senator Curtis, smiling, " I think we'll get

344 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Harding and Sutherland. They both want to vote for it, but
their States are against it. I'll go see them again. Keep the
backfires burning in their States."

Senator Curtis has the dark hair and skin of Indian ancestry,
and perhaps his Indian blood has given him his quick sense of
a situation and his knowledge of men. Without quite knowing
how it happened — ^it may have been his interest in listening or
his wisdom in advising — he had become the guiding friend, the
storm-center of our work on the Republican side of the Senate.

" Colonel Roosevelt has written to Senator Sutherland too,"
I thought hopefully, while I sat waiting for him in the marble
room. He came out, and said almost at once, " I've just had a
letier from Colonel Roosevelt asking me to vote for your Amend-
ment!"

"Have you.?" said I.

" Yes. But I wish he had told me how I can do it, when the
overwhelming sentiment of my State is against it." I spoke of
something else, but that night I reported this remark to Doris
Stevens and Abby Scott Baker. Both of them immediately
wrote to Colonel Roosevelt. Later, I again saw Senator Suther-
land. He had evidently forgotten our former conversation.

" I've had a letter from Colonel Roosevelt about your Amend-
ment," he said. " It's the second time he has written to me about
it. He wants me to come to Oyster Bay so he can give me
reasons for voting for it."

" I should think it would be awfully interesting to go," I
encouraged gently. And soon we checked off Senator Suther-
land's name on our lists, and said, " Five more to get."

" Do you think we can get Borah? " I asked Senator Curtis.
" He's one of the fathers of the Amendment. He introduced it in
1910."

" He says he did that by request."

" It doesn't say so in the Record. Doesn't a man always say
so when it is so ? "

" That is usual," said Senator Curtis, stroking his mustache
and not meeting my eyes, and I knew he said only half of what
he thought. ,

" I think I'll go and see him at once."

Senator Borah is a most approachable person, but when you
have approached, you cannot be sure you have reached, YoU
see him sitting at his desk, a large unferocious, bulldog type of
man, simple in manner. You talk with him, and you think he
is with you through and through. . . . But you never quite
know. . . . Sometimes you wonder if he knows.

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 345

In April, Senator Gallinger told Miss Paul that the Repub-
licans counted four more votes for Suffrage — Kellogg, Harding,
Page, and Borah. "We understand Borah will vote for the
Amendment if it will not pass otherwise. But he will not vote
for it if it will pass without him. But if his vote will carry it,
he will vote for it."

Thus far we had come on our journey toward the eleven, when
Senator Andreus Aristides Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the
Woman Suffrage Committee, rose in the Senate and announced
that on May 10 he would move to take up the Suffrage resolu-
tion. There was great rejoicing. We thought that now the Ad-
ministration would get the needed votes.

Indeed, with only two votes more to get, everything looked
promising.

In May, members of the Woman's Committee of the
Council of National Defense were received by the President
and Mrs. Wilson.

Florence Bayard Hilles, State Chairman in Delaware for
the National Woman's Party, who had campaigned for the
Liberty Loan throughout her State, and was then working
in the Bethlehem Steel Plant, as a munition maker, said to
the President:

Mr. President, it would be a great inspiration to all of us in
our war work if you would help towards our immediate enfran-
chisement.

Behind Mrs. Hilles came Mrs. Arthur Kellam, who is
Chairman of the Woman's Party in New Mexico, who said :

Mr. President, we, women of the West, are growing very
restless indeed waiting for the long-delayed passage of the
Federal Suffrage Amendment. Won't you help to secure this
recognition of citizens? The women of New Mexico and many
other States have no redress save through the Federal Amend-
ment. They are eagerly waiting for action on this measure in
the Senate. Will you help us ?

The President, with marked cordiality, answered:
" I will/ I will do all I can."

346 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

In the meantime, the President was receiving picturesque
groups of many descriptions: Pershing's Veterans went to
the White House; the Blue Devils of France, Finally a
group of women munition workers from the Bethlehem
Plant, led by Florence Bayard Hilles, came to Washington
to see the President in regard to Suffrage They were:
Catherine Boyle ; Ada Walling ; Mary Gonzon ; Lula Patter-
son ; Marie McKenzie ; Isabel C. Aniba ; Lilian Jerrold ; Mary
Campbell; Mildred Peck; Ida Lennox. The experience of
the war workers was amusing. They wrote at once asking
for an interview with the President. Mr. Tumulty responded
saying that the President bade him to tell them that " noth-
ing you or your associates could say could possibly increase
his very deep interest in this matter."

Mrs. Aniba despatched an answer, again asking for an
interview. She said among other things:

The work I do is making detonators, handling TNT, the
highest of all explosives. We want to be recognized by our
country as much her citizens as soldiers are.

Every day this little group went to the White House and
sat, waiting. They made a picturesque detail in the exceed-
ingly picturesque war flood surging through the White
House, wearing bands printed with the words, munition
workers on their arm and their identification badges. They
knitted all the time. At first, one of the secretaries explained
to them, " You are very foolish. You may have to wait
for weeks. Even Lord Reading had to come back four
times before he saw the President ! "

Later, an under-secretary said : " You are becoming a
nuisance. Other people have more consideration than to
keep coming back; but you persist and persist."

" Even Lord Reading had to come back four times before
he saw the President," quoted one of the munition ^rls.

They waited two weeks, but in the end they had to go
back to work. They wrote a letter to the Senate, however,
which was read there.

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 347
May 10 approached. I resume Miss Younger's narrative:

When the proper time arrived next day. Senator Andreus
Aristides Jones arose in his place. The galleries were packed.
Our forces were all present except the three missing votes.
There was Senator Smith of Michigan, who had come from
California; Senator Smith of Arizona, who had left a sick rela-
tive to be present for the vote; and there were others who had
come from far and wide. Senator Jones in the hush of a great
moment, rose and announced that he would not call up the
Amendment that day.

Our opponents looked at him and, grinning, taunted: " Haven't
you got the votes? " " We want to vote today." " We're ready
now."

Finally the women filed out of the galleries and went home,
and the Senate resumed its usual business.

Later, however, Senator Jones announced that on June 27
he would take up the Suffrage Resolution.
Miss Younger says:

Senator Jones does not act on mad impulse. No one could
imagine that placid, unhurried man buckling on his armor and
brandishing his sword to lead his forces a second time up a
blind alley only to lead them back again. Senator Jones was a
strong Administration man and would not act without approval.

Moreover, he was a sincere Suffragist. In fact, he was a
Father of the Amendment. So we kept at work, aiding and
abetting all its Fathers. For the disabilities of fathers are
manifest when you c<)mpare them with mothers. A father is so
casual, especially when his child is an Amendment to the Con-
stitution.

" Nagging ! " said Senator Lenroot viciously, when I asked
him to speak to Senator Borah. " If you women would only stop
nagging ! " And making a savage face at me, he hurried down
the hall.

I stood still. It was but the second time we had spoken to
him since he had come to the Senate. I wondered if he thought
we liked " nagging " ; if we liked going to the Capitol day after
day, tramping on marble floors, waiting in ante-rooms — some-
times rebuffed, sometimes snarled at. I wondered if he thought
we could do it for anything but a great cause — for the thousands
of women toiling in the factories, for the thousands struggling
under burdens at home. And then I bit my lips to keep back the

348 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

tears, and putting aside such uncomfortable things as feelings,
and putting forward such solacing things as a lace jabot and a
smile, I sent for another Senator.

Senator Martin, of silvery white hair and determined manner
would not sit down and talk Suffrage, nor would he stand up
and talk Suffrage. The only way to discuss Suffrage with
Senator Martin was to run beside him down the hall.

" The good women of Virginia do not want Suffrage," he said,
breaking almost into a trot, with eyes on his goal, which was
an elevator.

" But if you were convinced that the good women of Virginia
do want it ? " you replied, breaking almost into a run, with your
eyes on him.

" It's only the professional agitators I hear from," he an-
swered.

It is interesting to talk Suffrage with Senator Martin, and very
good exercise. But it was still more interesting to watch a
deputation of good Virginia women talking to him.

" Every one knows where I stand, and yet the ladies waylay
me all about the halls," he complained. Yet when we had spoken
before the Platform Committee of the Democratic Convention in
St. Louis, he told me : "I said to those men, ' There isn't an
equal number of you that could make as good speeches as those
women made.' " So he was not to be considered as hopeless,
though the path to his salvation was a strenuous one.

In June, Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the Interna-
tional Woman Suffrage Alliance, transmitted to the Presi-
dent a memorial from the French Union for Woman Suf-
frage asking him in one of his messages to proclaim the
principle of Woman Suffrage to be one of the fundamental
rights of the future.

The President replied in the following letter:

I have read your message with the deepest interest, and I
welcome the opportunity to say that I agree, without reservation,
that the full and sincere democratic reconstruction of the world,
for which we are striving, and which we are determined to bring
about at any cost, will not have been completely or adequately
attained until women are admitted to the Suffrage. And that only
by this action can the nations of the world realize for the benefit
of future generations the full ideal force of opinion, or the full
humane forces of action.

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 349

The services of women during this supreme crisis bf the
world's history have been of the most signal usefulness and dis-
tinction. The war could not have been fought without them or
its sacrifices endured. It is high' time that some part of our debt
of gratitude to them should be acknowledged and paid, and the
only acknowledgment they ask is their admission to the Suffrage.
Can we justly refuse it?

As for America, it is my earnest hope that the Senate of the
United States will give unmistakable answer to this question by
passing the Suffrage Amendment to our Federal Constitution
before the end of this session.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WooDRow Wilson.

Miss Younger says:

The twenty-seventh of June approached. Again we were in the
marble room talking with Senators. Absentees were on trains
hurrying to Washington. The antis were in the reception-room
knitting votes into their wool. The Capitol thrilled with excite-
ment. Even the Senators seemed to feel it. This time Suther-
land would vote " yea," and several opponents were absent. If
none of them paired with a Suffrage Senator we could just
manage the necessary majority. And the White House was
taking a hand. Senator James of Kentucky, in a Baltimore
hospital, had promised Mr. Tumulty that he would not pair — that
is, that he would not ask a Suffrage Senator to refrain from
voting to counterbalance his own enforced absence. Victory
seemed in our hands.

The day arrived. The galleries were filled. The Senators
came in all dressed up for the occasion — here a gay waistcoat or
a bright tie, there a flower in a button-hole, yonder an elegant
frock coat over gray trousers.

Senator Jones arose to take up the Amendment. At once op-
position developed. Our opponents were willing to have a vote,
provided all absentees could be paired. Now, if all absentees
were counted, we would not have enough votes. Senator James'
promise not to vote had given us our majority. But, stunned,
we heard Senator Underwood read a telegram from Senator
James pleading that some Suffragist pair with him. Senator
Underwood said he had just confirmed the telegram. It was not
until too late that we learned the truth. The telegram had been
sent six weeks earlier for another occasion.

And now Senator Reed had the floor. " Oh, who will pair

350 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

with OUie James?" he cried. "That n-o-oble Ollie James!
You all khow that great, fine, noble specimen of manhood, Ollie
James ! A pair ! A pair ! " he cried with tears in his voice and
arms outstretched. He went on and on.

We leaned over the balcony and watched Senator Curtis plead-
ing with Borah, urging him to vote for us and save our Amend-
ment. We watched breathlessly. We saw Borah listen, smile,
and then, without a word, rise and walk slowly out of the room.
We flew down to Senator Curtis.

" No, Borah won't do it. They say King is going to. Reed
won't give up the floor unless we withdraw or furnish a pair.
He and his friends will hold the floor for weeks, if necessary.
And the military bill must pass before July first. The army
needs money. You can see for yourself what's happening. It's
a filibuster."

Reed was still talking. They say he knows about a great
many subjects, and I think he talked about all he knew that day.
But nobody will ever know what they were, for no one listened;
and he never allowed the speech to be printed in the Record.

Finally Senator Jones arose and withdrew the motion to take
up Suffrage. Senator Reed, satisfied, sat down. His filibuster
had succeeded. He had threatened to hold up the military bill to
defeat us, so we had withdrawn. The Senate took up the mili-
tary bill, and we went home.

" Suffrage is dead for this session," said Senator McKellar.
" The Senators don't like being nagged any more. They are all
very tired of it."

But the Woman's Party did not think it was dead. They
worked at their usual strenuous pace all summer long. They
did feel, however, that if the President had exerted himself,
he could have obtained the two necessary votes for the
Amendment to pass. They were, moreover, highly indignant
over the filibuster of a Democratic Senator — ^Reed. Their
patience was beginning to wear thin.

In the meantime, the primary Senatorial elections were
coming up, and the President was taking an active part
in them. He was working against Senator Vardaman of
Mississippi and Senator Hardwick of Georgia, both Demo-
crats of jcourse and Vardaman a Suffragist. In other States,
he helped to elect anti-Suffragists in the places of Suffra-

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 361

gists. It is true that the President threw a sop to the Suf-
fragists in that he asked Senator Shields of Tennessee tp
come out for Suffrage. The Shields incident is interesting.

Senator Shields was making it his sole issue in the primary
campaign that he would carry out all the President's war
policies. Opposing Senator Shields was Governor Rye, a
Democrat of course, and a Suffragist.

Maud Younger called at the White House on Secretary
Tumulty one day to ask him if the President could not do
something further for Suffrage. Mr. Tumulty's answer was
to read a letter from President Wilson to Senator Shields,
asking him to vote for the Suffrage Amendment. Maud
Younger, with characteristic political astuteness, saw at
once the possibilities in the publication of that letter. She
asked Mr. Tumulty for a copy and Mr. Tumulty, with a
sudden sense of indiscretion, refused. However, Miss
Younger went back instantly with the story to Head-
quarters, and presently Sue White and Lucy Branham be-
came very busy — oh, very busy indeed — in the Tennessee
campaign.

On July 26, Senator Shields notified the Suffragists in
Tennessee that he would see them at three that afternoon.
He told the fifty women who gathered to meet him that
" he would hold the matter in consideration." The same
day a Columbia paper carried the story that President
Wilson had requested Senator Shields by letter to vote for
Suffrage. This brought the whole month-old correspondence
before the public.

The letters ran as follows:

The White House, Washington.
June 20, 1918.
My Dear Senator:

I feel so deeply the possibilities latent in the vote which is
presently to be itaken by the Senate on the Suffrage Amendment
that I am going to take a liberty which in ordinary circumstances
I should not feel justified in taking, and ask you very frankly
if it will not be possible for you to vote for the Amendment. I

352 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

feel that much of the morale of this country and of the world
will repose in our sincere adherence to democratic principles,
will depend upon the action which the Senate takes in this now
critically important matter. If it were merely a domestic ques-
tion, or if the times were normal, I would not feel that I could
make a direct request of this sort, but the times are so far from
normal, the fortunes of nations are so linked together, the re-
actions upon the thought of the world are so sharp and involve
such momentous issues that I know that you will indulge my
unusual course of action and permit me to beg very earnestly
that you will lend your aid in clearing away the difficulties which
will undoubtedly beset us if the Amendment is not adopted.
With much respect.

Sincerely yours,

WooDROw Wilson.

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.

June 25, 1918.
Mv DEAR Mr. President :

Your valued letter concerning the joint resolution proposing
an Amendment on the Federal Constitution favoring Equal Suf-
frage, now pending in the United States Senate, has challenged
my most thoughtful consideration, as do all your views upon
public matters. The resolution involves fundamental questions
affecting the sovereignty and powers of the Federal and State
governments, most important and vital to the people of the State
which I have the honor in part to represent in the United States
Senate, and those of States with which they are closely allied
in all social, economical, and governmental interests, upon which
I have most profound convictions, unfavorable to it, known, and
I believe approved, by the great majority of the people of Ten-
nessee— arrived at after full consideration of conditions existing
when I voted against a similar one some years ago and those
now confronting our country. The reasons for my ■ conclusions
are those controlling the majority of my colleagues from the
Southern States, well known to you and which would not be
interesting to here re-state.

If I could bring myself to believe that the adoption of the
Resolution would contribute to the successful prosecution of the
war we are waging with Germany, I would unhesitatingly vote
for it, because my whole heart and soul is involved in bringing it
to a victorious issue and I am willing to sacrifice everything save
the honor and freedom of our country in aiding you to accom-
plish that end. But I have been unable to do so. We cannot

FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 353

reasonably expect the proposed Amendment to be ratified within
less than two years and the discussion of it would, unques-
tionably, divert the minds and energies of the people from the
one great absorbing subject before us — the winning of the war —
by involviiig those of many States in a most bitter controversy
contrary to our earnest desire fo^ that unity of thought and
action of the American people now so imperatively required.

These are my sincere convictions, but, out of my very high
respect for your views, I will continue to give your suggestion
my most thoughtful and earnest consideration.

With the highest respect, I am.

Sincerely yours,

John K. Shields.

Washington, D. C.
June 26, 1918.
Thank you very sincerely for your frank letter of yesterday
about the Suffrage Amendment. I realize the weight of argu-
ment that has controlled your attitude in the matter, and I
would not have written as I did if I had not thought that the
passage of the Amendment at this time was an essential psy-
chological element in the conduct of the war for democracy. I
am led by a single sentence in your letter, therefore, to write to
say that I do earnestly believe that our acting upon this Amend-
ment will have an important and immediate influence upon the
whole atmosphere and morale of the nations engaged in the
war, and every day I am coming to see how supremely important
that side of the whole thing is. We can win if we have the will
to win.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WooDROw Wilson.

Many believe that had President Wilson — in regard to
Suffrage — gone over Shields' head to his constituents as —
in regard to other war policies — ^he had gone over the heads
of Vardaman and Hardwick to their constituents, Senator
Shields would have declared in favor of Suffrage.

On August 2, a letter written by the President to Senator
Baird of New Jersey was made public :

The President writes:

The whole subject of Woman Suffrage has been very much in
my mind of late and has come to seem to be a part of the interna-

364 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

tional situation^ as well as of capital importance to the United
States. I believe our present position as champions of democ-
racy throughout the world would be greatly strengthened if the
Senate would follow the example of the House of Representa-
tives in passing the pending Amendment. I, therefore, take the
liberty of writing to call the matter to your serious attention in
this light and to express the hope that you will deem it wise to
throw your influence on the side of this great and now critical
reform.

(Signed) Woodrow Wilson.

In spite of these letters, which of course were mere re-
quests, Alice Paul well knew, as did the Senators themselves,
that President Wilson was doing a little for Suffrage, but
not all he could. He was not of course doing for the Suf-
frage Amendment a tithe of what he did for other measures
in whose success he was interested. Nothing continued to
happen with monotonous, unfailing regularity.

The Woman's Party could wait no longer.

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS

At half-past four on Tuesday afternoon, August 6, a line
of nearly one hundred women emerged from Headiiiuarters,
crossed the other side of the street to the Park ; turned into
Pennsylvania Avenue. At the head of the long line floated
the red, white, and blue of the American flag carried by
Hazel Hunkins. Behind it came, banner after banner and
banner after banner, the purple, white, and gold of the
National Woman's Party tri-color. The line proceeded
along Pennsylvania Avenue until it came to the statue of
Lafayette just opposite the east gate of the White House.
All along the way, the crowds cheered and applauded the
women ; soldiers and sailors saluted the red, white, and blue
as it passed.

At the Lafayette monument, two banner bearers emerged
from the group; and stationed themselves on the platform
at the base of the statue.

One of them, Mary Gertrude Fendall, bore Inez Milhol-
land's banner, inscribed with her memorable last words:

HOW I.ONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBEETY?

The other, borne by Clara Wold and Blanche McPherson,
carried what was really the message of the meeting:

WE PROTEST AGAINST THE CONTINUED DISFKANCHISEMENT

OF AMERICAN WOMEN, FOR WHICH THE PRESIDENT OP THE

UNITED STATES IS RESPONSIBLE.

WE CONDEMN THE PRESIDENT AND HIS PARTY FOR ALLOWING
THE OBSTRUCTION OF SUFFRAGE IN THE SENATE.
3S5

356 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

WE DEPLORE THE WEAKNESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON IN PER-
MITTING THE SENATE TO LINE ITSELF WITH THE PRUSSIAN
REICHSTAG BY DENYING DEMOCRACY TO THE PEOPLE

WE DEMAND THAT THE PRESIDENT AND HIS PARTY SECURE

THE PASSAGE OF THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT THROUGH THE

SENATE IN THE PRESENT SESSION.

The other banner bearers marched to both sides of the
statue where they made solid banks of vivid color. Mrs.
Lawrence Lewis stepped forward. " We are here," she said,
" because when our country is at war for liberty and democ-
racy. ..."

At the word " democracy," the police, who had been draw-
ing nearer and nearer, placed her under arrest. Other
women standing about her were arrested, although they had
not even spoken.

For a moment there was a complete silence.

Then Hazel Hunkins, who had led the line carrying the
American flag, leaped upon the base of the statue and said:

Here, at the statue of Lafayette, who fought for the liberty of
this country, and under the American flag, I am asking for the
enfranchisement of American women.

She was immediately arrested. Another woman took her
place, and she was arrested; another; and another; and on
and on, until forty-seven women had been taken into custody.

Alice Paul, who had not participated in the parade, was
standing in the middle of the street, watching and listening.
She had no banner. She had not spoken. She had not
moved. But a policeman, pointing at her, said : " That is
the leader ; get her ! " And she was arrested.

Many women asked on what charge they were arrested.
"Do not answer them! Do not tell them anything!" said
a policeman. Others answered with very labored charges,
which were not substantiated later by Police Headquarters.
Patrol wagon after patrol wagon appeared, was filled with

Burning the Peesident's Words at the Lafayette
Monument, Washington.

A Summer Picket Line.

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS 357

women, and dashed off, followed by the purple, white, and
gold flutter of the banners.

When Hazel Hynkins was arrested, she forbade the policp-
men to take the American flag which she carried from her.
At the Municipal Building, she refused to relinquish it.
After the preliminaries of their arrest were over and the
women released on bail, they marched back in an unbroken
line behind Hazel's flag.

The arrested women were the following:

Hazel Adams, Eva E. Sturtevant, Pauline Clarke, Blanche A.
McPherson, Katherine R. Fisher, Rose Lieberson, Alice Kimball,
Matilda Terrace, Lucy Burns, Edith Ainge, May Sullivan, Mary
Gertrude Fendall, Julia Emory, Anna Kuhn, Gladys Greiner,
, Martha W. Moore, Cora Crawford, Dr. Sarah Hunt Lockrey,
Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Ellen Winsor, Mary Winsor, Mrs. Ed-
mund C. Evans, Christine M. Doyle, Kate Cleaver Heffelfinger,
Lavinia Dock, Harriet Keehn, Alice Paul, Mary E. Dubrow,
Lillian M. Ascough, Edna M. Purtelle, Ruby E. Koeing, Elsie
Hill, Helena Hill Weed, Eleanor Hill Weed, Mrs. Gilson
Gardner, Sophie G. Meredith, Louise M. Black, Agnes Chase,
Kate J. Boeckh, Hazel Hunkins, Cora Wold, Clara P. Wold,
Margaret Oakes, Mollie Marie Green, Gertrude Lynde Crocker,
Eifie Boutwell Main, Annie Arniel, Emily Burke Main.

The forty-seven were ordered to appear in court the next
morning at half-past nin*. The United States attorney told
them, when he arrived at 10 : 30, that the case was postponed
for a week. The police clerk told Clara Wold that she was
arrested " for climbing the statue."

Clara Wold describes her subsequent experiences when,
dismissed by the court, she walked to Headquarters past the
Lafayette monument, " there sat a colored man on the very
same ledge — ^basket, bundles, and papers strewn about him
as he comfortably devoured a sandwich."

Lafayette Park was not under the District of Columbia,
but directly under the President's military aide — Colonel
Ridley, who was also Superintendent of Public Bi;iildings and
grounds in Washington.

368 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

On August 13, the women appeared in the Federal Police
Court, as ordered, for trial. The charge had been decided
on ; " For holding a meeting in public gounds." But again
the Court announced postponement until August 15.

After vigorous protests by the Suffragists against further
delay, the cases of the eighteen, who were charged in addition
with " climbing a statue," were tried separately.

The women had no lawyers. Each spoke on her own
behalf. They defended themselves on the ground of the con-
stitutional right of free assemblage and appeal to the Gov-
ernment for the redress of grievances. They all pleaded.
Not Guilty. Many of them added that they did not recog-
nize the jurisdiction of the Court. Hazel Hunkins explained:
" Women cannot be law-breakers until they are law-makers."

One of the witnesses was the Chief Clerk of Public
Grounds, an elderly man. Elsie Hill suddenly asked him
when he had taken office. He replied, "In 1878." "Do
you realize," Miss Hill said, " that in that year a Federal
Suffrage Amendment was introduced, and that since then
women have been helping to pay your salary and that of
other government officials under protest.? " The Chief Clerk
was so astounded that he merely shook his head.

The trial of the remainder of the women on the charge
of " holding a meeting on public grounds " took place on
August 15.

At the very beginning of proceedings Alice Paul said:

As a disfranchised class we feel that we are not subject to the
jurisdiction of this court and therefore refuse to take any part
in its proceedings. We also feel that we have done nothing to
justify our being brought before it.

They then sat down and refused to answer any question
put to them.

The judge was utterly nonplussed by this situation. He
said that he would call a recess of fifteen minutes to consider
the question of contempt. Among the spectators who packed
the room was a lawyer — a visitor in Washington. He ex- >

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS 369

tracted a great deal of enjoyment out of this occasion, be-
cause, he said, " if the women are not afraid of jail, there
is nothing the judge can do." He awaited the judge's deci-
sion with an entertained anticipation. Apparently the judge
came to tjie same decision, for at the end of fifteen minutes,
the Court reconvened and the trial went on as though noth-
ing had happened.

The women refused to rise when charged. They refused
to plead Guilty or Not Guilty. They sat and read, or
knitted, or, as the proceedings bored them, fell asleep. The
Park Police were, of course, the only witnesses. At last all
the women whom they could identify were found Guilty.
They were sentenced to pay fines of five or ten dollars or to
serve in prison ten or fifteen days. They all refused to pay
the fine. Mary Winsor said : " It is quite enough to pay
taxes when you are not represented, let alone pay a fine if
you object to this arrangement." The prisoners were then
bundled in the Black Maria and taken off to prison.

Before the pickets were released from prison at the end
of the previous year. Superintendent Zinkham said to them :

Now don't come back^ for, if you do, I will have a far worse
place than the jail fixed tip for you. I will have the old work-
house fixed up for you, and you will have cells without sunlight,
with windows high up from the ground. You won't be as com-
fortable as you are here.

Everything happened as Superintendent Zinkham proph-
esied, and a great deal more that was worse. The old
Workhouse which he had promised them had been condemned
in Roosevelt's Administration, and had not been used for
years. The lower tier of cells was below the level of the
ground. The doors of the cells were partly of solid steel
and only partly of grating, so that little light penetrated.
The wash basin was small and inadequate. The toilet was
open, the cots were of iron and without springs, and with
a thin straw mattress on them. Outside, they left behind a
day so hot as to be almost insupportable, but in the Work-

360 I'HE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

house, it was so cold that their teeth chattered. It was
damp all the time. When the present writer visited this old
Workhouse in October, 1919, beads of water hung on every-
thing. The walls were like the outside of an ice water pitcher
in summer. Several of the pickets developed rheumatism.
But the unendurable thing about it was the stench which
came in great gusts ; component of all that its past history
had left behind and of the closeness of the unaired atmos-
phere. Apparently something was wrong with the water,
or perhaps it was that the pipes had not been used for years.
Most of the women believe they suffered with lead poisoning.
They ached all over; endured a violent nausea; chills.

However, all the twenty-six, with the exception of two
elderly women, went on hunger-strikes. Lucy Bums pre-
sented a demand on behalf of the entire company to Super-
intendent Zinkham. She said : " We must have twenty-three
more blankets and twenty-three hot-water bottles. This
place is cold and unfit for human habitation."

" I know it is cold and damp," he replied, " but you can
all get out of here by paying your fines."

The Woman's Party showed their usual ingenuity in
bringing these conditions before the public. As fast as
women were arrested, their State Senators and Representa-
tives were besieged by letters and telegrams from home urg-
ing them to go to see these imprisoned constituents. The
Press of their district made editorial question or comment.
As long as this imprisoning of the pickets 'Continued, there
was a file of Representatives and Senators visiting the vic-
tims. Senator Jones of Washington was the first outside
visitor to see them.

In the meantime, another meeting of protest, held at the
Lafayette Monument on August 12, with the same speakers
and many of the same banner bearers, was broken up by
the police.

A curious feature of this case was that at Police Head-

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS 361

quarters the police decided to confiscate, along with the
banners, the Suffragist regalia — a sash of purple, white, and
gold without any lettering whatever. The women refused
to relinquish these sashes, and there was in every case a
struggle, in which wrists were twisted, fingers sprained;
bruises and cuts of all kinds administered. All the thirty-
eight women were, however, released unconditionally.

On August 14, the women held two meetings of protest
at the Lafayette Monument — one at half-past four in the
afternoon, and one at eight o'clock in the evening.

This double protest came about in this way.

At the afternoon demonstration, the women were immedi-
ately arrested. They were held at Police Headquarters for
two hours. The authorities feeling then that the hour was
too late for further demonstrations, released them. They
did not require bail, or a promise to appear in Court.

The women went at once to Headquarters, snatched a
hasty dinner ; slipped quietly out of the building, and marched
to the Lafayette Monument. Everybody agrees that this
evening demonstration was very beautiful. It was held
in the soft dusk of the Washington August. The crescent
moon, which seemed tangled in the trees of the park, gave
enough light to bring out the Suffrage tri-color and the
Stars and Stripes. As the women gathered closer and
closer around the statue, the effect was of color, smudged
with shadow; of shadow illuminate with color.

Elsie Hill, carrying the American flag in one hand, and
the purple, white, and gold banner in the other spoke first ;
spoke wonderfully — as Elsie HiU always spoke. She said
in part:

We know that our protest is in harmony with the belief of
President Wilson, for he has stood before the world for the right
of the governed to a voice in their own government. We resent
the fact that the soldiers of our country, the men drafted to
fight Prussia abroad, are used instead to help still the demand of
American women for political freedom. We resent the suppres-
sion of our demands but our voices will carry across the country

362 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

and down through time. The world will know that the women
of America demand the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amend-
ment and that the President insists that the Senate act.

There were only two policemen on duty. For two police-
men to try to arrest nine lively and athletic pickets was a
little like a scene in Alice m Wonderland. They would pull
one woman down from the statue, start to get another,
whereupon the first would be back again with her flying
banner.

Finally, the police reserves arrived, but every woman had
managed to make a speech.

While the Suffragists were still in the old Workhouse,
Alice Paul, following her usual system of complete publicity,
had announced another protest meeting at the Lafayette
Monument.

Later Alice Paul received a letter from Colonel Ridley :

I have been advised that you desire to hold a demonstration
in Lafayette Square on Thursday, August 22. By direction 'of the
Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army, you are hereby granted per-
mission to hold this demonstration. You are advised good order
must prevail.

Miss Paul replied:

We received yesterday your permit for a Suffrage demonstra-
tion in Lafayette Park this afternoon, and are very glad that
our meetings are no longer to be interfered with. Because of
the illness of so many of our members, due to their treatment in
prison this last week, and with the necessity of caring for them
at Headquarters, we are planning to hold our next meeting a
little later. We have not determined on the exact date but w^
will inform you of the time as soon as it is decided upon.

As a result of the first series of protest meetings, the Ad-
ministration had yielded to the point of no longer interfering
with the meetings at the Lafayette Monument. But as time
went by and neither the Senate nor the President did any-
thing about Suffrage, the National Woman's Party an-
nounced that a protest meeting would be held at the La-

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS 363

fayette Monument on September 16 at four o'clock. Imme-
diately the President announced that he would receive a
delegation of Southern and Western Democratic women that
day at two.

The same day, September 16, as Maud Younger was com-
ing back from the Capitol to Headquarters, Senator Over-
man of the Rules Committee came and sat by her in the car.
In the course of his conversation, he remarked casually:
" I don't think your bill is coming up this session."

That afternoon, Abby Scott Baker went to see Senator
Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee,
to ask him to call a meeting of the Committee to bring Suf-
frage to the vote. Senator Jones refused. He said he would
not bring up the Suffrage Amendment at this session in
Congress.

When — still later — that delegation of Southern and West-
em Democratic women called on the President, he said to
them:

I am, as I think you know, heartily in sympathy with you.
I have endeavored to assist you in every way in my power, and I
shall continue to do so. I shall do all that I can to assist the
passage of the Amendment by an early vote.

This was the final touch.

The National Woman's Party hastily changed the type
of its demonstration. Instead of holding a mere meeting of
protest, they decided to burn the words which the President
had said that very afternoon to the Southern and Western
Democratic women. At four o'clock instead of two, forty
women marched from Headquarters to the Lafayette Monu-
ment. They carried the famous banners:

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOK ULBEETY?
MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOE WOMAN SUFFBA6E?

At the Lafayette statue. Bertha Arnold delivered an ap-
peal to Lafayette, written by Mrs. Richard Wainwright
and beginning with the famous words of Pershing in France:

364 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Lafayette, we are here!

We, the women of the United States, denied the liberty which
you helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for
sixty years, turn to you to plead for us.

Speak, Lafayette! Dead these hundred years but still living
in the hearts of the American people. Speak again to plead for
us, condemned like the bronze woman at your feet, to a silent
appeal. She offers you a sword. Will you not use the sword of
the spirit, mightier far than the sword she holds out to you?

Will you not ask the great leader of our democracy to look
upon the failure of our beloved country to be in truth the place
where every one is free and equal and entitled to a share in the
government? Let that outstretched hand of yours pointing to
the White House recall to him his words and promises, his
trumpet call for all of us to see that the world is made safe for
democracy.

As our army now in France spoke to you there, saying, " Here
we are to help your country fight for liberty," will you not speak
here and now for us, a little band with no army, no power but
justice and right, no strength but in our Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, and win a great victory again in
this country by giving us the opportunity We ask to be heard
through the Susan B. Anthony Amendment?

Lafayette, we are here !

The police, having no orders to arrest the women, smiled
and nodded. And while the crowd that had very quickly
gathered applatided, Lucy Branham stepped forward. Be-
side her was Julia Emory, holding a flaming torch.

" We want action," Miss Branham stated simply, " not
words." She took the torch from Julia Emory, held the
words of the President's message of that afternoon in the
flames. As it burned, she said:

The torch which I hold symbolizes the burning indignation of
women who for a hundred years have been given words without
action. In the spring our hopes were raised by words much like
these from President Wilson, yet they were permitted to be fol-
lowed by a filibuster against our Amendment on the part of the
Democratic Senate leaders.

President Wilson still refuses any real support to the move-
ment for the political freedom of women. . . .

We, therefore, take these empty words, spoken by President
Wilson this afternoon, and consign them to the flames.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

LrcY Bkanham Burning the Pebshjent's Words at the
Lafayette Monument.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

The Russian Envoy Banner, August, 1917.

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS 366

This is a symbol of the indignation of American women at
the treatment given by the President to their plea for democracy.

We have protested to this Administration by banners; we
have protested by speeches ; we now protest by this symbolic act.

As in the ancient fights for liberty the crusaders for freedom
symbolized their protest against those responsible for injustice
by consigning their hollow phrases to the flames^ so we, on
behalf of thousands of Suffragists, in this same way today, pro-
test against the action of the President and his Party in delaying
the liberation of American women.

For five years, women 'have appealed to this President and
his Party for political freedom. The President has given words,
and Words, and words. Today, women receive more words. We
announce to the President and the whole world today, by this
act of ours, our determination that words shall no longer be the
only reply given to American women — our determination that
this same democracy, for whose establishment abroad we are
making the utmost sacrifice, shall also prevail at home.

Applause greeted these spirited words. As Jessie Hardy
Mackaye started to speak, a man in the crowd handed her
a twenty-dollar bill for the Woman's Party. Others began
passing money to her. The Suffragists were busy running
through the crowd collecting it. The crowd continued to
applaud and cheer.

Mrs. Mackaye said:

Against the two-fold attitude on the part of the Senate toward
democracy, I protest with all the power of my being. The same
Congress and the same Administration that are appropriating
billions of dollars and enlisting the services of millions of men
to establish democracy in Europe, is at the same time refusing
to do so common a piece of justice as to vote to submit the
Woman Suffrage Amendment to the States.

This was the first time the President's words were burned.

The President's car drove up to the door during the prog-
ress of this demonstration, and President Wilson stepped in.
But instead of going out at the usual gate, the driver turned
the car abou^, so that he could make his exit elsewhere.

VII

THE PRESIDENT APPEALS TO THE SENATE TO
PASS THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT

The very next day occurred a remarkable example of direct
action : that direct action coming within twenty-four hours.
Senator Jones, who the day before had refused to bring up
Suffrage in this session, arose in the Senate and announced
that on September 26, he would move to take up the Suf-
frage Amendment, and keep it before the Senate until a vote
was reached.

' With this promise of definite action, the Woman's Party
immediately ceased their demonstrations.

On September 26, Senator Jones brought the Amendment
up. Maud Younger says, in her Revelations of a Woman
Lobbyist:

Discussion began. Discussion went on. For five whole days
it lasted, with waves of hope and waves of dismay, and always
an undercurrent of uncertainty. Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
the speeches went on. On Monday word went forth that the
President would address the Senate on behalf of our Amend-
ment.

I hurried to Senator Curtis, who was in his office signing
letters. He said : " The other side claim that they have their
men pledged: that the President comes too late. What do you
expect? "

" I don't know what I should expect. I hope."

I went over to the Senate. There was very great excitement;
a sense of something wonderful impending. On the floor there
was the ceremonious atmosphere that attends the President's
coming.

" Look," said a newspaper man in the gallery beside me, " he's
brought all his heavy artillery with him." There on the floor of
the Senate were the members of the Cabinet. Lesser dignitaries
were scattered about the room. Congressmen stood, two-deep,

366

PRESIDENT APPEALS TO THE SENATE 367

lining the walls. The Sergeant-at-Arms announced in clear tones :
" The President of the United States."

The President came in^ shook hands with the presiding officer,
turned and read his speech. There is always an evenness about
his public utterances, in manner, in voice, in reading; yet I
thought he read this message with more feeling than his War
message, or his Fourteen Points.

The President said:

Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual circumstances of a
world war in which we stand and are judged in the view not
only of our own people and our own consciences but also in
the view of all nations and peoples will, I hope, justify in, your
thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to bring you.

I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional
Amendment proposing the extension of the Suffrage to women
as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war
of humanity in which we are engaged. I have come to urge upon
you the considerations which have led me to that conclusion. It
is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to apprise you of
every circumstance and element involved in this momentous
struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes and its
outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to
remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.

I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the Amend-
ment because no disputable principle is involved but only a
question of the method by which the Suffrage is to be extended
to women. There is and can be no Party issue involved in it.
Both of our great national Parties are pledged, explicitly pledged,
to equality of Suffrage for the women of the country.

Neither Party, therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesita-
tion as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to
substitute Federal initiative for State initiative, if the early
adoption of this measure is necessary to the successful prosecu-
tion of the war and if the method of State action proposed in
Party platforms of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable
length of time, if practicable at all.

And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary to the
successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization
of the object for which the war is being fought.

That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you with
solemn earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly
and which I shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they
seem to me.

This is a peoples' war and the peoples' thinking constitutes

368 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

its atmc^sphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing-
room or the political considerations of the caucus.

If we be indeed Democrats and wish to lead the world to
democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our
sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led
nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. Our
professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming
when verification is asked for. And in this case verification is
asked for — asked for in this particular matter. You ask by
whom?

Not through diplomatic channels; not by foreign ministers.
Not by the intimations of parliaments. It is asked for by the
anxious, expectant, suffering peoples with whom we are dealing
and who are willing to put their destinies in some measure in
our hands, if they are sure that we wish the same things they do.

I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone the voices of
statesmen and of newspapers that reach me, and the voices of
foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all.
Through many, many channels I have been made aware what
the plain, struggling, workaday folk are thinking upon whom
the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war falls.

They are looking to the great, powerful, famous Democracy
of the West to lead them to the new day for which they have
so long waited; and they think in their logical simplicity, that
democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs
alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. If we
reject measures like this, in ignorance or defiance of what a new
age has brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not,
they will cease to believe in us; they will cease to follow or to
trust us.

They have seen their own governments accept this interpreta-
tion of democracy — seen old governments accept this interpreta-
tion of democracy — seen old governments like that of Great
Britain, which did not profess to be democratic, promise readily
and as of course this justice to women, though they had before
refused it, the strange revelations of this war having made many
things new and plain, to governments as well as to people.

Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to
ask and take the utmost that our women can give — service and
sacrifice of every kind — and still say we do not see what title
that gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the
affairs of their nation and ours ?

We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we
admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and

PRESIDENT APPEALS TO THE SENATE 369

toil and not a partnership of privilege and right? This war
could not have been fought either by the other nations engaged
or by America, if it had not been for the services of the women —
services rendered in every sphere — ^not merely in the fields of
effort in which we have been accustomed to see them work, but
wherever men have worked, and upon the very skirts and edges
of the battle itself.

We shall not only be distrusted but shall deserve to be dis-
trusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible
enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free
nations will enfranchise them.

We cannot isolate our thought and action in such a matter
from the thought of the rest of the world. We must either con-
form or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the
leadership of liberal minds to others.

The women of America are too noble and too intelligent and
too devoted to be slackers whether you give or i withhold this
thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work in
their thoughts and spirits if you give it to them.

I propose it as I would propose to admit soldiers to the Suf-
frage, the men fighting in the field for our liberties and the
liberties of the world, were they excluded. The task of the
woman lies at the very heart of the war, and I know how much
stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show
our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of
necessity depend upon the^.

Have I said that the passage of this Amendment is a vitally
necessary war measure, and do you need further proof? Do you
stand in need of the trust of other peoples and of the trust of
our own women? Is that trust an asset or is it not?

I tell you plainly, as the commander-in-chief of our armies and
of the gallant men in our fleets, as the present spokesman of this
people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the
world who are now our partners, as the responsible head of a
great government which stands and is questioned day by day as
to its purposes, its principles, its hopes, whether they be service-
able to men everywhere or only to itself, and who must himself
answer these questions or be shamed, as the guide and director
of forces caught in the grip of war and by the same token in need
of every material and spiritual resource this great nation pos-
sesses— I tell you plainly that this measure which I urge upon
you is vital to the winning of the war and to the energies alike
of preparation and of battle.

And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the

370 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

right solution of the great problems which we must settle, and
settle immediately, when the war is over. We shall need then
in our vision of affairs, as we have never needed them before,
the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women
of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots
of many things that we have not hitherto questioned, and I for
one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as
our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will
depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women
in our counsels. We shall need their moral sense to preserve
what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well
as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and
reformed. Without their connselings we shall only be half wise.
That is my case. That is my appeal. Many may deny its
validity, if they choose, but no one can brush aside or answer
the arguments upon which it is based. The executive tasks of
this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place
in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I do not
now possess, which I sorely need, and which I have daily to
apologize for not being able to employ.

In this speech, the President had said : " The voices of
foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all."

It was generally felt that the President, there, indicated
the Woman's Party. Commenting on that phrase the next
day, the Republican Senators remarked, " Why it was that
which brought him there ! "

During the course of the debate between Poindexter and
Pitman, Poindexter asked, " Wasn't it the pickets that got
the President.?"

The next afternoon when the vote was called for, and the
last Senator had answered to his name, the presiding officer
announced the result:

" The joint resolution does not pass."

The Suffrage Amendment still lacked two votes.

Miss Younger says in her RevelatioTis of a Lobbyist:

Stunned, as though unable to grasp it, hundreds of women sat
there. Then slowly the defeat reached their consciousness, and
they began slowly to put on their hats, to gather up their wraps,
and to file out of the galleries, some with a dull sense of injus-
tice, some with burning resentcqent. In the corridors they began

PRESIDENT APPEALS TO THE SENATE 371

to form in groups. Every one wanted to discuss it. But Alice
Paul took my arm.

" Come," she said, " we must find out about the short-term
candidates and go into the election campaign at once."

Immediately after the vote was taken and defeated, Sena-
tor Jones of New Mexico changed his vote and moved that
the measure be reconsidered; thereby placing it again on
the Senate Calendar, ready to be called up any time and
voted on.

By going to the Senate in this manner, the President had
made his own record clean to the country at large. But he
had not made it clean to the National Woman's Party,
because, although he had done something, he had not done
enough. He appeared to be doing more than he was, but there
was a great deal more that he could have done. He did not,
for instance, start his appeal to the Senate early enough.
That appeal came only a fortnight before the vote was
taken. Possibly he had underestimated the opposition; prob-
ably he had overestimated the strength of his own influence.
But the country at large of course did not understand that.
For the time being, therefore, the Woman's Party concen-
trated their drive on another point in the enemy line.

VIII

PICKETING THE SENATE

As the Senate was still sitting and could at any time reverse
its action in regard to the Suffrage Amendment, the
Woman's Party decided to protest against its defeat of the
./^onendment and to demand a reversal.

They began to picket the Senate and in especial the thirty-
four Senators whose adverse vote had again delayed the
passage of the Amendment.

On the morning of October 7, four banner-bearers ascended
the steps of the Capitol. They were: Elizabeth Klalb;
Vivian Pierce; Bertha Moller; Mrs. Horton Pope. The
lettered banner, flanked as usual with the Suffrage tri-color,
read:

WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED CONSTITTITION
ENFBANCHISING WOMEN.

They had hardly mounted the steps when the Capitol
police placed them under arrest. They took the prisoners
to the guard room in the Capitol, kept them there for fifteen
minutes, and then released them. It was, of course, not
exactly an arrest; and no one seemed exactly responsible
for the order. The banners were, however, confiscated.

That afternoon, the same women, except that Bertha
Arnold was substituted for Mrs. Pope, mounted the steps
bearing a large banner which read:

WE PROTEST AQAINST THE 34 WILFUL SENATOKS WHO HAVE
DELAYED THE POLITICAL FEEEDOM OF AMERICAN WOMEN.
THEY HAVE OBSTEUCTED THE WAE PEOGEAM OF THE PRESI-
DENT. THEY HAVE LINED UP THE SENATE WITH PRUSSIA BY
DENYING SELF-GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE.

372

PICKETING THE SENATE 373

All the afternoon, the banner-bearers were detained in the
courtroom at intervals. When they were released, they went
back to the Capitol; were arrested; detained in the court-
room again; released again.

On the morning of October 10, four more pickets, Edith
Ainge, Bertha Moller, Maud Jamison, Clara Wold, started
for the Capitol. Crowds of men and women gathered in the
park to see what was going to happen, and rows of police
stood on the Capitol steps awaiting the pickets. As soon
as the big protest banner was unfurled, the police seized it.
Maud Jamison and Clara Wold tried to mount the steps
with the tri-color, but several policemen rushed upon them,
and conducted them up the steps and into the Capitol build-
ing. As the police said over and over again that there were
no arrests, the women insisted on carrying their banners.

Protesting against the curious and inconsistent action on
the part of the police, the women were conducted into the
presence of the captain. He iterated and reiterated that
this action was all in accordance with the rules of Colonel
Higgins, the Democratic Sergeant-at-Arms who is under the
Rules Committee which carries out the Democratic pro-
gram. The Suffragists demanded by what authority they
were held and the captain informed them that it did not
make any difference about the law, that Colonel Higgins had
taken the law into his own hands. The four Suffragists
waited for a few minutes. Their purple, white, and gold
banners had been confiscated, but the protest banner was
still there. Suddenly, without any interference from any-
body, they took up their protest banner, walked out of the
guard room, went over to the Senate Office Building and
stood with it, at the top of the steps, the rest of the day.
Later Vivian Pierce, Mrs. Stewart Polk, Mary Gertrude
Fendall and Gladys Greiner joined this group of pickets.

In the meantime, other Suffragists were trying vainly to
take the Suffrage colors to the Capitol steps. They walked
from the Office Building on to the Plaza by twos. The instant
they appeared, policemen, rushing down the steps, rushing

374 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

from the curb, rushing from the crowd which had gathered,
seized them. They tried to wrench the banners away; and
this was, of course, an unequal contest, in which sometimes
the women were pulled completely off the ground and always
their wrists painfully twisted. But the women clung to the
banners, walked as calmly as the situation permitted into
the Capitol, and down to the guard room. Here the ban-
ners were always confiscated, but they, themselves, were re-
leased. If anybody in the crowd showed any disposition to
resent the attitude of the police, he was placed under arrest
too; but he also was released.

On October 11 the Suffragists picketed only the Senate
Office Building, as Congress was not in session. At the be-
ginning of the day, Mrs. George Atwater and Betty Cram
held the banners. Mrs. Atwater's two little girls, Edith
and Barbara, assisted their mother by holding the tri-
colors.

Others who picketed that day were: Grace Needham,
Mrs. George Odell, Elizabeth Kalb, Virginia Arnold, Mary
Gertrude Fendall, Gladys Greiner, Maud Jamison, Vivian
Pierce, Bertha MoUer, Clara Wold.

On October 13, plans for another demonstration were
announced in the Washington papers. Edith Amge, bearing
the American Hag, was to lead a procession of Suffragists>
on to the Senate -floor. There the words of the anti-Suffrage
Senators in praise of democracy were to be burned. For
an hour before the line formed, the Capitol police were lined
up, ready for the pickets. Above, Senators hung over the
balcony where they could witness the demonstration. Be-
low, motor after motor drove up to the curb and stopped,
waiting to see what was going to happen. At length, the
Suffragists arrived. They formed in line outside the Senate
Office Building, and started towards the Capitol. They were
beset by a battalion of police, and taken to the guard room.
Women standing in the crowd, who were not in the proces-
sion, but who wore the Suffrage colors were taken along also.

PICKETING THE SENATE 375

Alice Paul; who wore no regalia of any kind, was caught in
the net.

These women were: Alice Paul; Vivian Pierce; Bertha
MoUer; Bertha Arnold; Elizabeth McShane; Edith Ainge;
Edith Hilles; Julia Emory; Clara Wold; Elizabeth Kalb;
Virginia Arnold; Grace Frost; Matilda Young; Mrs. K. G.
Winston.

The Woman's Party now decided to open a "banner"
campaign on each of the Senators who had helped to defeat
the Suffrage Amendment. They began with Senator Wads-
worth. They unrolled on the steps of the Senate OflBce
Building a banner which read :

SENATOR WADSWOKTH's REGIMENT IS FIGHTING FOE
DEMOCRACY ABROAD.

SENATOR WADSWORTH LEFT HIS REGIMENT AND IS FIGHTING
AGAINST DEMOCRACY IN THE SENATE.

SENATOR WADSWORTH COULD SERVE HIS COUNTRY BETTER BY

FIGHTING WITH HIS REGIMENT ABROAD THAN BY

FIGHTING WOMEN.

Later appeared another banner, proclaiming the case of
Senator Shields:

SENATOR SHIELDS TOIjD THE PEOPLE OF TENNESSEE HE
WOULD SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT'S POLICIES. THE ONLY TIME
THE PRESIDENT WENT TO THE SENATE TO ASK ITS SUPPORT,
SENATOR SHIELDS VOTED AGAINST HIM. DOES TENNESSEE BACK
THE president's WAR PROGRAM OR SENATOR SHIELDS?

These banners were taken up by the newspapers of the
Senators' States and focussed unfavorable attention
upon them.

By this time, the Capitol police had found that their sys-
tem of arresting and detaining what threatened to prove an

376 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

inexhaustible army of Suffragists was futile. So now they
reverted to their policy of 1917. They stood aside and let
the crowd worry the Suffragists. Mainly, however, these
were small boys, who seized the banners and dragged them
through the streets.
On October 23 appeared:

&EBMANT HAS ESTABUSHED " EQUAL, UNIVEBSAI,, SECBET,
DIRECT FEANCHISE." THE SENATE HAS DENIED EftUAL UNI-
VEBSAL SITFFBA6E TO AMEEICA. WHICH IS MOBE OF A DEMOC-
BACY, GEBMANY OB AMEBtOA?

The small boys, generally office boys, were allowed to tear
up this banner too.

On October 24, Julia Emory and Virginia Arnold suc-
ceeded in getting to the top of the Capitol steps, unseen by
the police who were grouped on the sidewalk. Their banner
said :

WE CONDEMN THE DEMOCBATIC FABTT. THE DEMOCBATIC
FABTY DEFEATED SUFFBAGE. THE DEMOCBATIC PABTY HAS
PI.ACED AMEBICA BEHIND GEBMANY AS A DEMOCBiACY, IF
GEBMANY HAS, AS SHE SAYS, ESTABLISHED EQUAL, UNIVEBSAL,
SECBET, DIBECT FBANCHI8E.

The instant they caught sight of this banner, the police-
men took the two girls to the guard room, where they held
them, until half-past seven that evening.

On October 25, as the Senate was not in session, the
pickets returned to the Office Building, where hitherto they
had been unmolested. There were four of them, and they
carried the Great Demand banner. They were arrested, and
held until six o'clock. They went back to the Capitol at
eight in the evening, and were again arrested, and held until
eleven o'clock. Friends or newspaper men, calling at the
Capitol, could get no information about them. On various

PICKETING THE SENATE 377

pretexts, the telephone answered nothing. These women
were Matilda Young; Elizabeth Kalb; Julia Emory; Virr
ginia Arnold.

On October 26, eight pickets bore the Wadsworth and
Shields banners with the tri-color. As usual, the poles of
their banners were broken ; their banners themselves snatched
from them; they were seized and held.

That afternoon, there was an aeroplane demonstration in
Washington. Seven pickets went out with banners: Julia
Emory, Maud Jamison, Bertha Arnold, Katherine Fisher,
Minna Lederman, Elizabeth Kalb, Mrs. Frances Davies.
They were handled with great roughness. Maud Jamison
was knocked senseless by a policeman. Several men in uni-
form protested to the police.

On October 28, twenty-one women, each bearing the pur-
ple, white, and gold banners, started for the Capitol.
They marched a banner's length apart across the Capitol
grounds.

They had gone halfway up the steps, when policemen in
plain clothes appeared from all sides and grappled with
them. Many women were injured. Aimie Arniel was thrown
to the ground so violently that she fainted. An ambulance
was summoned to take her to the hospital. The other women
were locked in a basement room until six o'clock, when they
were released. They were escorted through the Capitol
grounds by a member of the vigilant force 'of guards. He
bore the American flag which had been carried at the head
of their line. As they reached the limit of the Capitol
grounds, he returned that to them, but all the lettered ban-
ners and tri-colors were retained.

The twenty-one women were: Edith Ainge; Harriet U.
Andrews; Bertha Arnold; Virginia Arnold; Annie Arniel;
Olive Beale ; Lucy Bums ; Eleanor Calnan ; L. G. C. Daniels ;
Frances Davis ; Julia Emory ; Mary Gertrude Fendall ; Mrs.
Gilson Gardner; Sara Grogan; Maud Jamison; Elizabeth
Kalb; Augusta M. Kelley; Lola Maverick Lloyd; Matilda
Young; H. R. Walmsley; Alice Paul.

378 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

On October 29, two pickets went to the Capitol with a
banner inscribed:

EESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.

They were seized and held until the afternoon.

By some divagation in the police policy, they were seized,
while they were walking to the car after their release, and
held for another hour.

On October 30, five pickets, carrying the Senator Baird
banner and three tri-colors, picketed the north frOnt of the
Capitol for an hour. Then they marched to the south front,
determined to take up their staiid on the Senate steps. Half-
way in their progress, they were seized, locked up, and held
until six o'clock.

Indignant at these arrests without charge, the National
Woman's Party decided to protest the next day — Thursday.

On October 31, therefore, after the usual morning arrest,
their lawyer applied to Judge Siddons of the District
Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. The Judge
declared that the sergeant-at-arms had no right to hold any
one without a charge, that he must either make a charge, or
release the Suffragists. The sergeant-at-arms released them
at once. Nevertheless, when the pickets returned in the
afternoon, they were seized in the usual violent fashion
and conducted to the guard room. However, although their
banners were not returned to them, they were detained
but a few minutes. On Friday, they were released as soon
as their banners were seized. Fresh banners appeared from
time to time all day long. Again consulted. Judge Siddons
said that the police had no right to keep the banners. On
Saturday, however, the police did not have to seize the ban-
ners ; there appeared a variation in the picket line. A group
of women walked up and down in front of the Senate Office
Building. They bore no lettered banners ; they bore no tri-
colors; but they wore on their arms black mourning bands

PICKETING THE SENATE 379

— in commemoration of the death of justice in the United
States Senate.

On November 21, the Senate declared a recess without con-
sidering the Federal Suffrage Amendment. That day, twelve
pickets protested against the recess, marching from the
Senate Office Building to the Capitol. They were: Alice
Paul, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Elizabeth Kalb, Clara Wold,
Bertha Arnold, Sara Grogan, Julia Emory, Anita PoUitzer,
Matilda Young, Mrs. Nicholas Kelly, Olive Beale, Maud
Jamison.

They carried a banner which read:

AMEEICAN WOMEN PBOTEST AGAINST THE SENATE's RECESSING
WITHOUT PASSING THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT.

AMERICA ENTERS THE PEACE CONFERENCE WITH UNCUCAN
HANDS FOR DEMOCRACY IS DENIED TO HER PEOPLE.

THE NATIONS OP THE WORLD CANNOT TRUST HER MEDIA-
TION IF SHE PREACHES DEMOCRACY FOR ALL EUROPE WHILE
AMERICANS ARE ARRESTED FOR ASKING FOR IT AT THE CAPITOL.

On this occasion, the women were treated outrageously.
The police, two to a picket, pounced upon them as they ap-
proached the Capitol. One was heard to call, " Help ! Help !
They're coming ! " Clara Wold was knocked down twice on
the Senate steps ; was shaken like a rat. They dragged and
pushed Alice Paul about as though personally enraged with
her. When they were taken into the basement room of the
Capitol a crowd of indignant men and women followed.
Policeman No. 21 threatened to arrest a man in the crowd
because he said : " Sure ! I believe in Woman Suffrage.*'

THE THIRD APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS

All during this period, the National Woman's Party was, of
course, taking its part in the autumn campaign — ^the cam-
paign of 1918. It was in the Senatorial elections only that
the Woman's Party was interested. The expedient quality
of Alice Paul's policy manifested itself notably here. It has
been shown again and again how swift she was to adapt the
tactics of the Woman's Party to the needs of the moment.
The Woman's Party, it must always be remembered, was
organized for but one object^-to enfranchise the women of
the United States by federal amendment. Other Suffrage
organizations could and did divide their interests ; could and
did deflect their forces for those interests. On this point,
Alice Paul never swerved. But as has been again and again
demonstrated, she was as fluid as water, as swift as light, to
adapt that single adamantine policy to the situation of the
moment. At this juncture she extended her policy.

The circumstances were these:

In the Senate, Suffrage needed two more votes.

In the West, as usual, the Woman's Party asked the
women voters to defeat the Democrats as the Party in power
and therefore the Party responsible. In two States in the
East — New Jersey and New Hampshire — ^where the Repub-
lican candidates were anti-Suffragists and the Democratic
candidates were Suffragists, the Woman's Party supported
the Democratic candidates.

That campaign, short as it was, was intensive. In the
West Elsie Hill took care of Nevada; Catherine Flanagan
of Montana; Anita PoUitzer of Wyoming; Clara Wold of
Oregon; Louise Gamett of Kansas; Iris Calderhead of
Colorado. In the East, Doris Stevens, Betty Gram,

380

THIRD APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 381

Bertha Arnold, Ruth Small, Rebecca Hourwich, Vivian
Pierce, Bertha MoUer, Lucy Branham, Caroline Katzenstein,
Florence Bayard Hilles, Agnes Morey, Gladys Greiner,
Maud Younger, Mary Beard, Abby Scott Baker, Mary
Dubrow, Grace Needham, Lucy Burns, Mrs, Lawrence
Lewis, Katherine Morey took care of New Jersey and New
Hampshire.

The two vacancies in the Senate from New Jersey and
New Hampshire had been caused by death. The Senators
who would take those seats in November would fill out
the remainder of the Congress then in Session. In New Jer-
sey the Republican candidate — Senator Baird — ^had voted
against the Suffrage Amendment in the Senate on October 1.
The Democratic candidate — Charles O'Connor Hennessy —
had fought all his public life in New Jersey for National
Woman Suffrage.

In New Hampshire the Republican candidate — George
H. Moses — ^was an anti-Suffragist. The Democratic candi-
date— John B. Jameson — was for the Federal Amend-
ment.

The National Woman's Party thought of course the
President would assist them in their campaign for Hennessy
and Jameson, as they were both Democrats as well as Suf-
fragists and, in particular, because he had just told the
Senate that the passing of the Federal Amendment was neces-
sary to the successful prosecution of the war. But he gave
them no help until the Woman's Party forced him to do so,
and then it was too late. But when the news came back from
the Suffrage States of the West that the Woman's Party
spee^kers were telling of his inaction, he sent — in the last
week in October — ^the following letter to Hennessy of New
Jersey :

May I not say how deeply interested I am in the contest you
are conducting? I cannot but feel that in ignoring my earnest
appeal with regard to the Suffrage Amendment, made in public
interest, and because of my intimate knowledge of the issues
involved both on the other side of the water and here, Senator

382 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Baird has certainly not represented the true feeling and spirit
of the people of New Jersey.

I am sure that they must have felt that such an appeal could
not and should not be ignored. It would be a very great make-
weight, thrown into the international scale, if his course of
action while in the Senate could be reversed by the people of our
great State.

Also, before the end of the campaign, the President came
out in a statement endorsing Jameson. But he did not work
so hard to elect these two Democrats, who were also Suf-
fragists, as he did to defeat Vardaman and Hardwick, both
of whom were Democrats and one a Suffragist. Hennessy
and Jameson were both defeated. In the West, the election
resulted in the defeat of Senator Shafroth of Colorado,
thereby handing the Senate over to the Republicans. The
defeat of Shafroth is universally ascribed to the Woman's
Party. The Woman's Party believed that this election had
brought them one vote, Pollock of South Carolina.

The Borah incident of the campaign of 1918 is a black
page in the record of any gentleman who has Presidential
aspirations. Catherine Flanagan and Margaret Whitte-
more were campaigning in western Idaho, asking the Idaho
people to bring pressure on Borah to vote for Suffrage.

Shortly after casting his vote against the Federal Amend-
ment, Borah came to Headquarters to see Alice Paul. He
said that that vote represented his personal belief, but that
in the future he would have to be bound by the Idaho Party
(Republican) platform which had endorsed the Amendment.
He said he would not give a public statement as that would
look like trying to get votes, but he wrote out a statement
that the Woman's Party could understand as indicating his
position. That statement is as follows:

We have talked over the Suffrage situation with Senator Borah
and our understanding from the interview is that he will carry out
his platform and vote for the Suffrage Amendment if re-elected.

The Woman's Party telegraphed this statement to Idaho
and asked his constituents to get him to confirm it. He was

THIRD APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS 383

very evasive in replying to their questions and Alice Paul
finally sent him the following letter :

October 29, 1918.
Senator Wm. E. Borah,
Senate OflSce Building,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Senator Borah:

In view of the statement that you have just telegraphed to one
of our members, Mrs. Mareella Pride, in Boise, and in view of
the statements which you have made to various newspaper cor-
respondents in Washington since Mrs. Baker's and my interview
with you, giving them the impression that there was no basis for
our understanding that you would vote for the Suffrage Amend-
ment after November 5th, we feel that we have no course left
but to throw all the strength which we possess in Idaho against
you. I have, therefore, telegraphed to this effect today to Miss
Whittemore, who is in charge of our Idaho work.

I am sure I need not teU you how much we regret that you
have not felt able to say frankly what you would do after election,
and that you are not willing to stand by the statement which you
authorized us to give out as'^expressing the understanding to be
derived by us from our interview with you.
Sincerely yours,

Alice Paul,
National Chairman.

Thereupon the Woman's Party campaigned against him
until election. Borah was re-elected. Here — anticipating by
three months — it must be mentioned that when on February
10, the Amendment came to a vote, Borah voted, " No."

THE PRESIDENT INCLUDES SUFFRAGE IN HIS
CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS

Foe the third time the Woman's Party had waged in the
West one of its marvelous campaigns against the Democratic
Party. The repercussion of that campaign had reached the
President. When Congress convened in December, he in-
cluded the Federal Amendment in his message of Decembr 2
to Congress as a part of the Administration program. He
said:

And what shall we say of the women — of their instant intelli-
gence, quickening every task that they touched ; their capacity for
organization and co-operation, which gave their action discipline
and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted;
their aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their
hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and what
they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond
appraisal. They have added a new luster to the annals of
.^jDcrican womanhood.

The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals
of men in political rights as they have proved themselves their
equals in every field of practical work they have entered,
whether for themselves Or for their country. These great days
of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to
omit that act of justice. Besides the immense practical services
they have rendered, the women of the country have been the
moving spirits in the systematic economies by' which our people
have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the
world and the armies upon every front with food and everjrthing
else that we had that might serve the common cause. The de-
tails of such a story can never be fully written, but we carry
them at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we are
the kinsmen of such.

This was the first time that any President ever mentioned
Suffrage as a part of his administrative program. It was

384

SUFFRAGE INCLUDED IN CAMPAIGN 385

a step forward. The women waited ten days to see whether
he would follow this message with action.

The President sailed for France.

When the Woman's Party discovered from the Adminis-
tration leaders that he had left no orders to have SufFrage
carried out, they decided to hold another protest meeting.

" In carrying on a campaign for Democracy abroad and
utterly ignoring it at home," Alice Paul said, " he has ex-
posed his whole broadside to our attack."

As always, whenever possible, the Woman's Party an-
nounced their protest meeting through the newspapers.
Lucy Branham went to Police Headquarters. She explained
her errand, asking for a permit.

" Here's your permit ! " Colonel Ridley said.

Lucy Branham made further explanation, " We are going
to burn the President's words," she warned him.

" Here's your permit ! " Colonel Ridley said.

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS AGAIN

On December 16, a woman carrying an American flag,
emerged from Headquarters, Behind her came a long line
of women bearing purple, white, and gold banners. Behind
them came fifty women bearing lighted torches. Behind them
came women — ^more women and more women and more women.
Always a banner's length apart they marched and on they
came . . . and on . . . and on . . . and on. . . . Peo-
ple who saw the demonstrations say that it seemed as though
the colorful, slow-moving line would never come to an end.
Witnesses say also that it was the most beautiful of all
the Woman's Party demonstrations. They marched to the
Lafayette Monument. Their leader, Mrs. Harvey Wiley,
stopped in front of a burning cauldron which had been
placed at the foot of the pedestal. The torch bearers
formed a semi-circle about that cauldron. The women with
the purple, white, and gold banners — ^who were the speakers
— grouped themselves around the torch bearers.

Among these women were the State Chairman or a
Woman's Party representative from almost all the forty-
eight States ; some of whom had come great distances to be
present on this occasion. There were three hundred in all.

In the meantime, a huge crowd, which augmented steadily
in numbers and in excitement as the long line of Suffragists
came on and on and on, formed a great, black, attentive
mass, which hedged in the banner bearers, as the banner
bearers hedged in the torch bearers. In that crowd were
the National Democratic Chairman and many prominent
Democratic politicians.

Dusk changed into darkness, and the flames from cauldron
and torches mounted higher and higher.

386

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORllS AGAIN 387

After the Suifragists had assembled, there came a moment
of quiet. Then Vida Milholland stepped forward and with-
out accompaniment of any kind, sang with her characteristic
spirit the WomarCs Marseillaise. Immediately afterwards,
Mrs. John Rogers opened the meeting, and introduced, one
after another, nineteen speakers, each of whom, first reading
them, dropped some words of President Wilson's on democ-
racy into the flaming cauldron.

Mrs. John Rogers declared:

We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty
to American women. All over the world today we see surging
and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and
women would be derelict to their duty if they did not see to it
that it brings freedom to the women of this land.

England has enfranchised her women, Canada has enfran-
chised her women, Russia has enfranchised her women, the
liberated nations of Central Europe are enfranchising their
women. America must live up to her pretensions of democracy !

Our ceremony today is planned to call attention to the fact
that the President has gone abroad to establish democracy in
foreign lands when he has failed to establish democracy at home.
We burn his words on liberty today, not in malice or anger, but
in a spirit of reverence for truth.

This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect
an answer. If it is more words, we will burn them again. The
only answer the National Woman's Party will accept is the
instant passage of the Amendment in the Senate.

Mrs. M. Toscan Bennett was the first speaker. She said :

It is because we are moved by a passion for democracy that
we are here to protest against the President's forsaking the cause
of freedom in America and appearing as a champion of freedom
in the old world. We burn with shame and indignation that
President Wilson should appear before the representatives of
nations who have enfranchised their women, as chief spokesman
for the right of self-government while American women are
denied that right. We are held up to ridicule to the whole world.

We consign to the flames the words of the President which have
inspired women of other nations to strive for their freedom while

388 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

their author refuses to do what lies in his power to do to liberate
the women of his own country. Meekly to submit to this dis-
honor to the nation would be treason to mankind.

Mr. President, the paper currency of liberty which you hand
to women is worthless fuel until it is backed by the gold of
action.

The Reverend Olympia Brown of Wisconsin, eighty-four
years old, burned the latest words of President Wilson, his
two speeches made on the first day of his visit to France. She
said:

America has fought for France and the common cause of lib-
erty. I have fought for liberty for seventy years and I protest
against the President leaving our country with this old fight here

Mrs. John Winters Brannan burned the address made by
President Wilson at the Metropolitan Opera House in open-
ing the Fourth Liberty Loan Campaign, in which he justified
women's protest when he said :

We have been told it is unpatriotic to criticise public action.
If it is, there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this
nation. We have forgotten the history of our country if we have
forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate when it is
necessary to readjust matters.

Mary Ingham burned President Wilson's speech of the
Fourth of July, 1914, in which he said:

There is nothing in liberty imless it is translated into definite
action in our own lives today.

Miss Ingham said:

In the name of the women of Pennsylvania who are demanding
action of the President, I consign these words to the flames.

Agnes Morey burned President Wilson's book. The New
Freedom. She said:

BURNING THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS AGAIN 389

On today, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party> in the
name of the liberty-loving women of Massachusetts, I consign
these words to the flames in protest against the exclusion of
women from the Democratic program of this Administration.

Henrietta Briggs Wall burned President Wilson's address
given at Independence Hall, July 4, 1919, when he said:

Liberty does not consist in mere general declarations of the
rights of man. It consists in the translation of these declarations
into action.

Susan Frost, of South Carolina, burned President Wilson's
last message to Congress in which he again spoke words
without results.

Mrs. Townsend Scott burned his message to the Socialists
in France which declared:

The enemies of liberty Jrom this time forth must be shut out.

Mrs. Eugene Shippen burned this message to Congress :

This is a war for self-government among all the peoples of
the world as against the arbitrary choices of self-constituted
masters.

Sara Grogan burned another message to Congress dealing
with liberty for other nations.

Clara Wold burned the message to Congress demanding
Self-government for Filipinos.

Jessie Adler burned the speech to the Chamber of Com-
merce of Columbus:

I believe that democracy is the only thing that vitalizes the
whole people. ^

Mrs. Percy Reed burned this message to Congress :

Liberty is a fierce and intractable thing to which no bounds can
be set and no bounds ought to be set.

Sue White burned the President's reply to President
Poincare of France.

390 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Mary Sutherland burned the words :

I believe the might of America is the sincere love of its people
for the freedom of mankind.

Edith Phelps burned the Flag Day address.
Doris Stevens burned a statement to Democratic women
before election:

I have done everything I could do and shall continue to do
everything in my power for the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Dr. Caroline Spencer burned the words which President
Wilson said when he laid a wreath on the tomb of Lafayette,
" in memory of the great Lafayette — from a fellow servant
of liberty."

Margaret Oakes burned the Suffrage message to the
Senate :

We shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise our
women.

Florence Bayard Hilles ended the meeting with a declara-
tion that women would continue their struggle for freedom,
and would burn the words of President Wilson even as he
spoke them until he and his Party made these words good
by granting political freedom to the women of America.

After the meeting was over, the long line marched back
to Headquarters. A big, applauding crowd walked along
with them.

XII

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM

Alice Paul spent all day Christinas of 1918 in bed resting.
At least, she was resting physically. Mentally . . .

On that day she evolved a new plan of bri&ging the atten-
tion of the President, the attention of the country, the atten-
tion of the world, to the fact that the Susan B. Anthony
.Amendment must be passed. It was impossible — ^because of
the action of the police in putting out the fires and arresting
those who tended them — ^to carry out, in all its detail, her
original plan which was extraordinarily striking and pic-
turesque. Perhaps at no time in the history of the world
has there ever been projected a demonstration so full of a
beautiful symbolism.

The original plan was to keep a fire burning on the
pavement in front of the White House till the Susan B.
Anthony Amendment was passed. Wood for this bonfire
was to be sent from all the States. Whenever the President
made a speech in Europe for democracy, that speech was to
be burned in the watchfire. While this was going on a bell,
which was set above the door of Headquarters, would toll.

On the afternoon of New Year's Day, 1919, therefore, a
wagon drove up to the White House pavement and deposited
an urn filled with firewood — on a spot in line with the White
House door. Presently the bell at Headquarters began to
toll, and a group of women marched from Headquarters to the
urn. Edith Ainge lighted the fire, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis
dropped into the flames the most recent words, in regard to
democracy, that President Wilson had addressed to the
people of Evirope.

The first was from the Manchester speech:

391

392 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

We will enter into no combinations of power which are not
combinations of all of us.

The second was from his toast in Buckingham Palace :

We have used great words, all of us. We have used the words
" right " and " justice," and now we are to prove whether or not
we understand these words.

The third was from his speech at Brest :

Public opinion strongly sustains all proposals for co-operation
of self-governing peoples.

The fourth was from the speech to the English wounded:

I want to tell you how much I honor you men who have been
wounded fighting for freedom.

As Mrs. Lewis burned these " scraps of paper," Mary
Dubrow and Annie Arniel, standing behind the urn, unfurled
a lettered banner:

PKESIDENT WILSON IS DECEIVING THE WOELD WHEN HE
APPEARS AS THE PKOPHET OF DEMOCRACY.

PRESIDENT WILSON HAS OPPOSED THOSE WHO DEMAND
DEMOCRACY FOR THIS COUNTRY.

HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OP
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS.

WE IN AMERICA KNOW THIS.

THE WORLD WILL FIND HIM OUT.

This was the first of the many Watchfires of Freedom
kindled by the Woman's Party.

After these words were burned, Mrs. Lewis addressed the
crowd that had gathered. When Helena Hill Weed, who

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 393

had followed her, was speaking, a group of soldiers and
sailors rushed forward, overturned the urn, and began to
stamp out the blazing pieces of wood. There were two
sentinels on each side of the urn, Gertrude Crocker, Harriet
U. Andrews, Mrs. A. P. Winston, Julia Emory. They bore
the tri-color, but they also bore torches. They quickly
lighted the torches from the embers, and held them aloft.
The rioting continued, but Mrs. Weed went calmly on with
her speech.

Suddenly there was an exclamation from the crowd.
Everybody turned. Flames were issuing from the huge,
bronze um in Lafayette Square directly opposite the bon-
fire.

Hazel Hunklns — clinging to the high-pedestaled urn — ^was
holding aloft the Suffrage tri-color. The flames played over
the sleixder Tanagra-like figure of the girl and glowed
through the purple, white, and gold. People said it was —
that instant's picture — ^like a glimpse from the Gotterdcm-
merung. Policemen immediately rushed over there, followed
by a large crowd. They arrested Alice Paul, Julia Emory,
Hazel Hunkins, Edith Ainge.

In the meantime, the fire in front of the White House had
been rebuilt and rekindled. It burned all night long and
all the next day. Alice Paul, who had been released with her
three companions after being detained at the police station
for a while, remained on guard until morning. Annie Arniel
and Julia Emory stayed with her. It rained all night. But
until late, crowds gathered, quiet and very interested, to
listen to the speeches. This was Wednesday. All day
Thursday succeeding groups of women took up their watch
on the fire.

Friday afternoon, the same banner was carried out. As
soon as it was unfurled, a crowd of soldiers, sailors, and
small boys, a chief petty officer in the navy being most
violent, attacked the Suffragists, Mary Dubrow and Ma-
tilda Young. They tore the banner, broke the urn and
attacked the purple, white, and gold flags. The fires, were.

894 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

however, at once rekindled. It was still raining, and the
rain was mixed with snow, which became a steady sleet. But
the fires continued. Finally a force of policemen put them
out with chemicals. That night they were relighted. Mary
Logue and Miss Ross guarded it until two in the morning;
Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Julia Emory from two until
seven.

Saturday afternoon, the bell at Headquarters tolled
again. Immediately the flames leaped up on the White
House pavement. Alice Paul, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, and
Phoebe Munnecke burned the first speech on Liberty made
by President Wilson on reaching Italy. They were arrested,
and the police put out the watchfire with chemicals. In-
stantly the fire started in the urn. Mary Dubrow and Julia
Emory were arrested. All five women were released on bail.

On Sunday, January 5, Julia Emary, Mary Dubrow,
Annie Amiel, and Phoebe Munnecke started a fire in front of
the White House. They burned the second speech on Lib-
erty made by the President in Italy. All the time the bell
pealed its solemn tocsin. The four sentinels were arrested.
This time they refused to give bail and were sent to the house
of detention. The fire had now burned all day and all night
on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

All these sentinels were charged, when they were arrested,
with breaking a Federal Park regulation. But when they
came to court, they were charged with building a bonfire on
a public highway between sunset and sunrise. Three of them
went to prison for five days, and three for ten days. They
all went on hunger-strike.

January 7, evidently the official mind changed. The fire
which consumed the President's speech on democracy deliv-
ered in Turin was allowed to burn for three hours. Never-
theless the crowd kept kicking it about, so that there was
a line of flames across the pavement and trailing into the
gutter. By hook or by crook — three of the Suffragists —
Harriet Andrews, Mrs. A. P. Winston, Mrs. Edmund C.
Evans — managed to keep it going.

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 396

At the end of three hours, new orders seemed to mate-
rialize out of the air; for then the police took a hand and
put i;he fire out. With the extinction of the last ember,
however, a second fire burst into flames at the base of the
Lafayette Monument across the street. The police rushed
to it, and put it out. Immediately another fire started at
the opposite corner of the Park. And then fires became gen-
eral . . . here . . . there . . . everywhere. . . .

The police arrested the three women who had kept the fire
going. On the following day they were sentenced to five days
in jail.

On the afternoon of that day, Mrs. M. Toscan Bennet
and Matilda Young burned the speech that the President
had just made at the statue of Columbus in Genoa. They
were arrested at once, and they too were given five days
in jail.

By this time, there were eleven women in jail, all on a
hunger-strike.

On the afternoon of January 13, just as the thousands
of government clerks began to pour down Pennsylvania
Avenue past the White House, twenty-five Suffragists, each
one bearing a banner of purple, white, and gold, came round
the corner of Lafayette Square. They proceeded to the
White House pavement, where they built a watchfire. The
crowds, of course, stopped to watch the proceedings.
Policemen finally broke through them and arrested three of
the women. The other twenty-two closed in their line , a
little, and went on with their fire-building. The police re-
turned, but they did not arrest the others. But they tried
to break up the fire with huge shovels and a fire extinguisher.
They tried to trample it out. But it was useless. Wherever
a bit of the watchfire fell, it broke into flames. Finally, they
arrested seventeen more women. Four remained, holding the
purple, white, and gold banners.

Suddenly a great tongue of flame leaped upwards from
the urn in Lafayette Square, The crowd rushed towards it.

396 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Then for a moment it seemed to go mad. A group of young
men rushed over to the Headquarters; climbed up the pil-
lars; tore down the flag, the uprights, and the pole. The
bell ultimately crashed to the ground.

The police arrested the remaining four sentinels. By
eight o'clock that afternoon, released on bail, all the women
were back in Headquarters. Half an hour later, they went
out with their banners again. The streets seemed deserted
even by policemen. But, as they crossed the street, the park
police began to materialize from the shrubs and trees of the
square. Howerer, they built their watchfire on the White
House pavement, and stood there on guard for an hour and
a half. Crowds gathered, of course. Occasionally, a man
would rush over to one of the girls, and tear her banner
from her. The girl would hold it as long as it was a physical
possibility, the crowd meanwhile calling remonstrance or
encouragement according to their sympathies. By ten
o'clock the women were all arrested again. They spent the
night in the house of detention. They were: Dr. Caroline
Spencer; Adelina Piunti; Helen Chisaski; Mrs. C. Weaver;
Eva Weaver; Ruth Scott; Elsie Ver Vane; Julia Emory;
Lucia Calmes; Mrs. Alexander Shields; Elizabeth Kalb;
Mildred Morris; Lucy Burns; Edith Ainge; Mrs. Gilson
Gardner; Gertrude Crocker; Ellen Winsor; Kate Heflfel-
finger; Katherine Boyle; Naomi Barrett; Palys L. Chev-
rier; Maud Jamison; Elizabeth Huff.

Suffragists filled the court when these women came up
for trial. Four of them were tried at once. They were sen-
tenced to a ten-dollar fine or five days' imprisonment. Their
entrance into court had been greeted with applause from the
audience. When the next four women appeared, they too
were applauded. The Judge said, " The bailiffs will escort
the prisoners out and bring them in again, and if there is
any applause this time . . ."

The prisoners returned, and the applause was a roar.
Three women among those who applauded were taken out

Vhoto Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

One op the Watchfikes of Freedom.
Taken Just Before the Arrest of the Picket Line.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

A Policeman Scatters the Watchfire.

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 397

of the mass. " The police will escort the women out of the
courtroom," said the Court. When they reached the door,
" And see that they do not return," added the Court. As
the door closed, " And lock the doors," shouted the Court.
Thereafter, the prisoners were brought m one at a time,
and were sent to jail immediately. Twenty-two women were
thus sentehced. There remained one for whom thfere was no
prosecuting witness — ^Naomi Barrett.

The next day, Naomi Barrett was tried alone. As she
came forward, applause greeted her — applause long and
continued. The Judge ordered silence. The applause con-
tinued. He ordered the applauders to be brought forward.
One, Mrs. JPflaster, sank to the floor in a faint. She was
picked up and put on a chair, but as she fell from the chair,
the Judge ordered her removed at once. A physician was
sent for. Her fellow Suffragists demanded that they be
permitted to see her. Finally one of them was allowed to
go to her. The Court had scarcely reached the next case
when word came that Mrs. Pflaster was in a serious condi-
tion. The Suffragists came rushing in and demanded that
the Judge come off the Bench and see what had happened;
the Court obeyed. In due time the doctor arrived, a
stretcher came, and the patient was taken to the Emergency
Hospital.

The Judge resumed his seat, and sentenced Bertha Moller,
Gertrude Murphy, Rhoda Kellogg, and Margaret Whitte-
more — the applauders — to twenty- four hours in jail for con-
tempt of court.. Mrs. Barrett was sentenced to five days
in jail. They joined the twenty-two women who were already
there and hunger-striking.

On January 27, six women kindled a Watchfire on the
White House pavement. They were arrested on the charge
of starting a fire after sundown. They were as usual, tried
the next day; sentenced to five days in jail. They went on
a hunger-strike of course. They were : Bertha Moller ; Ger-
trude Murphy ; Rhoda Kellogg; Mary Carol Dowell ; Martha
Moore; Katherine Magee.

398 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

In the meantime an interesting event took place in France.
President Wilson received a delegation representing the
working women of France, Saturday, January 25, at the
Murat Mansion in Paris. The delegation urged upon the
President that the Peace Conference include Woman Suf-
frage among the points to be settled by the Conference.
President Wilson replied as follows:

Mile. Thomson and ladies: You have not only done me a great
honor, but you have touched me very much by this unexpected
tribute; and may I add that you have frightened me, because
realizing the great confidence you place in me, I am led
to the question of my own ability to justify that ' con-
fidence ?

You have not placed your confidence wrongly in my hopes and
purposes, but perhaps not all of those hopes and purposes can
be realized in the great matter that you have so much at heart —
the right of women to take their full share in the political life
of the nations to which they belong. That is necessarily a do-
mestic question for the several nations. A conference of peace
settling the relations of nations with each other would be re-
garded as going very much outside its province if it undertook
to dictate to the several states what their internal policy should
be.

At the same time these considerations apply also to the condi-
tions of labor; and it does not seem to be unlikely that the con-
ference will take some action by way of expressing its sentiments,
at any rate, with regard to the international aspects at least of
labor, and I should hope that some occasion might be offered
for the case not only of the women of France, but of their sisters
all over the world, to be presented to the consideration of the
conference.

The conference is turning out to be a rather unwieldy body,
a very large body representing a great many nations, large and
small, old and new; and the method of organizing its work suc-
cessfully, I am afraid will have to be worked out stage
by stage. Therefore I have no confident prediction to
make as to the way in which it can take up the question of this
sort.

But what I have most at heart today is to avail myself of
this opportunity to express my admiration for the women of all
the nations that have been engaged in the war. By the fortunes
of this war the chief burden has fallen upon the women of

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

Suffragist Rebuilding the Fire Scattered by the Police.

■ ' ■'!

■r^. «. .

^^^F

'•

HHII** ""*">*

if i . J

I .

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, VVashingtonj D. C.

The Last Suffragist Arrested — the Fire
Burns On.

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 399

France, and they have borne it with a spirit and a devotion which
has commanded the admiration of the world.

I do not think that the people of France fully realize, perhaps,
the intensity of the sympathy that other nations have felt for
them. They think of us in America, for example, as a long way
off. And we are in space but we are not in thought. You must
remember that the United States is made up . of the nations of
Europe: that French sympathies run straight across the seas,
not merely by historic association but by blood connection, and
that these nerves of sympathy are quick to transmit the impulses
. of one nation to the other.

We have followed your sufferings with a feeling that we were
witnessing one of the most heroic, and may I add, at the same
time satisfactory things in the world, satisfactory because it
showed the strength of the human spirit, the indomitable power
of women and men alike to sustain any burden if the cause was
great enough.

In an ordinary war there might have been some shrinking,
some sinking of effort; but this was not an ordinary war. This
was a war not only to redeem France from an enemy, but to
redeem the world from an enemy. And France, therefore, and
the women of France strained their hearts to sustain the world.
I hope that the strain has not been in vain. I know that it has
not been in vain.

This war has been popular and unlike other wars in that it
seemed sometimes as if the chief strain was behind the lines and
not at the lines. It took so many men to conduct the war that
the older men and the women at home had to carry the nation.
Not only so, but the industries of the nation were almost as much
a part of the fighting as the things that took place at the fronts.

So it is for that reason that I have said to those with whom
I am at present associated that this must be a people's peace,
because this was a people's war. The people won this war, not
the governments, and the people must reap the benefits of the
war. At every turn we must see to it that it is not an adjust-
ment between governments merely, but an agreement for the peace
and security of men and women everywhere.

The little obscure sufferings and the daily unknown privations,
the unspoken sufferings of the heart, are the tragical things of
this war. They have been borne at home, and the center of the
home is the woman. My heart goes out to you, therefore, ladies,
in a very unusual degree, and I welcome this opportunity to bring
you this message, not from myself merely, but from the great
people whom I represent. ,

400 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Mary Nolan — over seventy years old — immediately made
Suffrage capital of this speech by the President. Mrs.
Nolan's record in the period of the Watchfires is positively
heroic.

On January 19, with Bertha A.mold, Mrs. Nolan was
arrested for the first time in connection with the Watchfires
of Freedom demopstrations. On January 24, while under sus-
pended sentence, the two women again fed the flames in front
of the White House. They were immediately arrested; the
next day, tried. Mrs. Nolan said :

I am guilty if there is any guilt in a demand for freedom. I
protest against the action of the President who is depriving
American women of freedom. I have been sent to represent my
State Florida, and I am willing to do or suffer anjrthing to bring
victory to the long courageous struggle. I have fought this fight
many years. I have seen children born to g^ow to woman-
hood to fight at my side. I have seen their children grow up to
fight with us.

So great a storm of applause greeted these remarks that
the Judge had thirteen of the applauders brought immedi-
ately to the dock and tried for contempt of Court. Thirteen
women were sentenced to forty-eight hours in jail with no
alternative of fines. These thirteen women were : Lucy Burns ;
Edith Ainge; Mary Gertrude Fendall; Phoebe Munnecke;
Lucy Branham; Annie Arniel; Matilda Young; Ruth
Crocker ; Elsie Unterman ; Kiate Boeckh ; Emily Huff; Lucile
Shields ; Elizabeth Walmsley.

Bertha Arnold received a sentence of five days, but Mrs.
Nolan was released.

On Monday, January 27, Mrs. Nolan went out on the
picket-line again, this time with Sarah Colvin. As she burned
in the Watchfire the text of the President's words to the
French workingwomen, she said :

President Wilson told the women of France that they had not
placed their confidences wrongly in his hopes and purposes. I
tell the women of France that the women of America have placed

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 401

their confidence in President Wilson's hopes and purposes for six
years, and the Party of which he is a leader has continually, and
is even now obstructing their enfranchisement.

President Wilson has the power to do for the women of this
nation what he asserts he would like to do for the women of
other nations.

There are thirty-one days left for the passage of the Suffrage
Amendment in this Congress, of which his Party is in control.
Let him return to this country and act to secure democracy for
his own people. Then the words that he spoke for the women of
Europe will have weight and will bear fruit. Sooner or later
the women of the world will know what we know — ^that confidence
cannot be placed in President Wilson's hopes and purposes for
the freedom of women.

The police seemed loath to arrest Mrs. Nolan, but they
finally -fid so. The Court as reluctantly sentenced her to
twenty-four hours in jail. Mrs. Colvin received the cus-
tomary five days. Three more applauding Suffragists were
committed at this last trial, for forty-eight hours: Cora
Crawford, Margaret Rossett, Elsie Ufaterman.

On January 31, Mrs. Nolan was again arrested at a
Watchfire demonstration with Mary Ingham and Annie
Arniel. She was discharged by the Court. Mary Ingham
and Annie Arniel, it may be mentioned, were held in jail for
two days before they were brought to trial. There were no
witnesses against them, and so they were freed.

On February 4, Mrs. Nolan was arrested again with Elsie
T. Russian and Bertha Wallerstein for burning the Presi-
dent's speech to French Deputies. There was the usual
applause when the three women appeared in Court, and,
as usual, the Judge ordered silence; as usual, the applause
continued. Three applauders were thrown out.

Mrs. Russian made the following statement to the Court :

By burning the hypocritical words of President Wilson, we
have expressed the unmistakable impatience of American women.
In place of words, these women demand action. I am glad to
have taken part in the expression of that demand.

402 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

The watchfires had been going since New Year's Day,
growing in numbers until they culminated in the biggest
demonstration of all, two days before the day set for the vote.

On February 9, they burned the President in efBgy.

At half-past four that Sunday, the bell at Headquarters
began to toll. A procession of a hundred women, headed
by Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer bearing the American flag,
marched to the White House pavement. Behind Mrs. Have-
meyer came Ella Riegel, bearing the purple, white, and gold
banner. Behind the color bearers came Mrs. John Rogers
and Mary Ingham, carrying a lettered banner which said:

ONLY FIFTEEN LEGISLATIVE DAYS ARE LEFT FOB
THIS CONGRESS.

FOR MOKE THAN A YEAR THE PRESIDENT'S PARTY HAS
BLOCKED SUFFRAGE IN THE SENATE.

IT IS BLOCKING IT TODAY.

THE PRESIDENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BETRAYAL
OF AMERICAN WOMANHOOD.

Behind this came Sarah T. Colvin and Mrs. Walter Adams,
carrying a second lettered banner :

WHY DOES NOT THE PRESIDENT ENSURE THE PASSAGE OF
SUFFRAGE IN THE SENATE TOMORROW?

WHY DOES HE NOT WIN FROM HIS PARTY THE ONE
VOTE NEEDED?

HAS HE AGREED TO PERMIT SUFFRAGE AGAIN TO BE
PUSHED ASIDE?

PRESIDENT WILSON IS DECEIVING THE WORLD. HE PREACHES
DEMOCRACY ABROAD AND THWARTS DEMOCRACY HERE.

Behind these banners came Nell Mercer and Elizabeth
McShane bearing an earthen urn filled with fire. Behind

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 403

them came Sue White and Gabrielle Harris, who were to
perform the leading act of the demonstration.

After these came twenty-six wood bearers, and long
eddying waves of the purple, white, and gold. The urn
bearers deposited the urn in its place on the pavement oppo-
site the White House door. The wood bearers and the
banner bearers formed a guard about it. Sue White then
advanced and dropped into the flames a paper figure — a car-
toon— of the President. Mrs. Havemeyer then attempted to
make a speech. Before she was arrested, she managed to say
the following three sentences:

Every Anglo-Saxon government in the world has enfranchised
its women. In Russia, in Hungary, in Austria, in Germany itself,
the women are completely enfranchised, and thirty-four are now
sitting in the new Reichstag. We women of America are as-
sembled here today to voice our deep indignation that while such
efforts are being made to establish democracy for Europe, Ameri-
can women are stiU deprived of a voice in their government here
at home.

Speaker after speaker attempted to follow her, but they
were all arrested. The police patrols were soon filled up,
and nearby cars were cpmmandeered. There was an enor-
mous crowd present. The police — nearly a hundred of
them — tried to force them back, and succeeded in getting
them part way across Pennsylvania Avenue. When they
turned back, more wood had been brought from Head-
quarters, and another fire started. Other women who came
from Headquarters with further reinforcements of wood
were stopped and arrested. The police then declared the
open space between the encircling crowd and the banner-
bearing women a military zone. No person was allowed to
enter it. For an hour, therefore, the women stood there.
For the most part, they were motionless, but at intervals they
marched slowly round their small segment of sidewalk. The
crowd stayed until the banner bearers started homeward.
They followed them to the very entrance of Suffrage Head-
quarters.

404 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

All this time the bell was tolling.

Those arrested were: Mrs. T. W. Forbes, Mary Nolan,
Sue White, Mrs. L. V. G. Gwynne Branham, Lillian
Ascough, Jennie Bronenberg, Rose Fishstein, Nell Mercer,
Amy Juengling, Reba Comborrov, Mildred Morris, Clara
Wold, Louise Bryant, Bertha Wallerstein, Martha Shoe-
maker, Rebecca Garrison, Pauline Adams, Marie Ernst
Kennedy, Willie Grace Johnson, Phoebe Munnecke, Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, Edith Ainge, Lucy Daniels, Mary Ingham,
Elizabeth McSharie, Sarah T. Colvin, Ella Riegel, Mrs.
William Upton Watson, Anne Herkner, Palys Chevrier,
Anna Ginsberg, EsteUa Eylward, Annie Arniel, Cora Weeks,
Lucy Burns, Helena Hill Weed, Mrs. John Rogers, Gladys
Greiner, Rose G. Fishstein.

On February 10, the Anthony Amendment came up once
more for the vote in the Senate of the United States. Per-
haps at this juncture recapitulation in regard to the Senate
situation will be illuminating.

It will be remembered that when the Amendment passed
the House on January 10, 1918, the Suffragists were eleven
votes short in the Senate, and how — Maud Younger
told the story most vivaciously — ^nine of these votes were
obtained. For a long time, the Suffragists continued to
lack the remaining two votes. The first thing that promised
to ameliorate this deadlock was the nomination in the South
Carolina primaries of Pollock for the short term of the
Sixty-fifth Congress, convening December 2, 1918. Senator
Pollock confused the situation extraordinarily for the Suf-
fragists. The South Carolina branch of the Woman's
Party interviewed him immediately after his election and it
was their understanding that he told them that he would
vote " yes " on the Amendment. When he came to Wash-
ington, however, he refused to state how he would vote. The
Suffragists were in a difiicult situation. Many of them be-
lieved that he intended to vote for the Amendment but he
would not say that he did. They believed they had one of
the two necessary votes but they could never be sure of it.

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 406

All the time, therefore, they were trying to get the votes
of Moses of New Hampshire, Gay of Louisiana, Hale of
Maine, Trammell of Florida, and Borah of Idaho, as they
seemed the most likely of the opposed or non-committal men.

Indeed, two kinds of campaigns were going on — one in the
States among the constituents of these possible men and the
campaign of the Watchfires in Washington. As soon as
the Watchfires began, the President again began to work.
He called various Senators asking them to support the
Amendment. The Democratic leaders became alarmed at
the effect on the country of this constant turmoil in front
of the White House. In fact they did the thing they had
always steadfastly refused to do — called a caucus to mobilize
the Democrats back of the Suffrage Amendment. At this
caucus, various Administration leaders appealed to the
Party members in the Senate to give their support to the
measure. Pollock then made his first public declaration that
he would vote for the Suffrage Amendment.

The Amendment now needed but one vote.

The chairman of the Suffrage Committee then announced
that another effort would be made to pass the measure and
it would be brought up for a vote on February 10, although
until the Watchfires started, they had repeatedly declared
that it would be impossible to bring it up twice in the same
session.

As Congress was coming to an end, it was decided to take
the vote anyway, although, as things stood, even with Pol-
lock, the Suffragists lacked one vote. Pollock did vote for
Suffrage but the other vote was not forthcoming. The
Amendment was therefore defeated on February 10.

From February 10 to June 4, the Woman's Party was
working to get that one vote.

While the Senate was debating Suffrage, thirty-nine of
the women who had burned the President in effigy the day be-
fore were being tried. Twenty-five sentences of five days and
one of two days were, pronounced. Then the Judge de-

406 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

manded, " How many more women are there out there? "
When he found that several were still waiting, he dismissed
them without trial.

They were not charged with burning the effigy of
the President, but with unlawfully setting fire to certain
combustibles in that part of the District of Columbia known
as the White House grounds.

The prison conditionis which these Suffragists endured
were as unpleasant as before. At first they went to the
District of Columbia jail. Since previous incarcerations and
the resulting complaints and investigations, soap and water
had been used to some extent in this jail. So much, indeed,
had soap and water been used that the prisoners could now
clearly distinguish the vermin of more than one species
creeping up and down the walls. The rats ran about in
hordes. While conditions were somewhat Improved, they
were still bad.

Harriet Andrews, writing of her Impressions of the jail
In the Swffragist of January 25, says:

The jail was real. And it was not funny. I had a book of
poetry to read, but I was sorry I hadn't taken a volume from the
.works of the late Henri Fabre. It would have been interesting
' to study the habits of cockroaches. I lay on my straw pallet
and watched them clustered in the upper right hand corner of my
cell waiting for my light to be put out before they began their
nightly invasion. And when my light went out, the bulb that
still burned in the corridor enabled me to watch them crawling
down in a long, uninterrupted line- . . . There were also other
things that crawled.

The last group were sent to the old Workhouse in which
Suifraglsts had been Imprisoned the August before.

Of that Helena Hill Weed says In the Suffragist of Feb-
ruary 22:

No fire had been built in the old Workhouse this winter until
a few hours before we were imprisoned there. The dampness

THE WATCHFIRES OF FREEDOM 407

and cold of the first floor was quite unbearable. They per-
mitted the women to sleep in the upper tier of cells^ where the
ventilation is better than on the ground floor where we were
forced to sleep last summer. But these cells are too dark to stay
in during the day, and the only other place is the cold, damp
stone floor on the ground. The only fresh air in the prison enters
the building through windows fifteen feet above the level of the
floor where the women have to spend their waking hours. The
warm air from the furnaces, which enters the building on the
first floor immediately rises to the roof. The damp, icy winter
air and all the noxious gases and foul odors sink to the floor,
where the women have to sit. They are serving their imprison-
ment under practically cellar conditions. The authorities are not
forcing us to drink the water in the pipes of the Workhouse
this time, but are supplying fresh water.

Harriet Andrews said that in coining out, " the sense of
air and light and space burst upon me like a shout."

In the meantime, the Woman's Party, carrying out its
extraordinary thorough and forthright policy of publicity,
had not failed to tell the country at large about all this.
They sent throughout the United States a carfull of
speakers; all women who had served sentences in prison.
They were : Abby Scott Baker, Lucy Burns, Bertha Arnold,
Mary Ingham, Mabel Vernon, Mrs, Robert Walker, Gladys
Greiner, Mrs. A. R. Colvin, Ella Riegel, Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, Mrs. W. D. Ascough, Mary Winsor, Elizabeth Mc-
Shane, Vida MilhoUand, Sue White, Lucy Ewing, Lucy
Branham, Edith Ainge, Pauliue Adams, Mrs. John Rogers,
Cora Week, and Mary Nolan.

This ear was called the Prison Special and the newspapers
soon called the women the Prison Specialists, On the plat-
form the speakers all wore duplicates of their prison cos-
tumes. Perhaps in all its history, the Woman's Party has
never gathered — not a more brilliant company of speakers
— ^but speakers with so marvelous a story to tell. They
spoke to packed houses. At their very first meeting in
Charleston, South Carolina, traffic was actually stopped by
the overflow meeting.

XIII

THE APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT ON
HIS RETURN

The President of the United States returned to America
from Europe on February 24*, 1919, landing in Boston.
Boston arranged an enormous welcome-home demonstration.
The Woman's Party determined to take part in that welcome
to remind him of the Suffrage work to be done, and they
announced this to the world at large. Alice Paul went to
Boston to arrange this demonstration. The Boston police
announced in their turn that they would establish a dead
line in front of the reviewing stand beyond which the Suf-
fragists would not be allowed to penetrate. However, the
Suffragists, following the Red Cross women, marched
through the line of Marines who held the crowd back, and
took up their position before the reviewing stand where the
President was to appear. At the head of the line in the
place of honor, waving the American flag, was Katherine
Morey. On one side of the Stars and Stripes was the his-
toric banner:

ME. PEESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT TOR UBEETY?

On the other side of the Stars and Stripes was a second
historic banner:

ME. PEESIDENT, WHAT WILL YD XT DO FOE WOMAN SUPFEAGE?

The special lettered banner for the occasion read:

ME. PEESIDENT, YOU SAID IN THE SENATE ON SEPTEMBEE 30,
" WE SHALL NOT ONLY BE DISTEUSTED BUT WE SHALL DESEEVE
TO BE DISTEUSTED IF WE DO NOT ENPEANCHISE WOMEN."

408

APPEAL TO PRESIDENT ON HIS RETURN 409

TOU AI.ONE CAN BEMOVE THIS DISTKUST NOW BY SECUEING

THE ONE VOTE NEEDED TO PASS THE SUFFEAGE AMENDMENT

BEFOEE MAECH 4.

This banner was carried by Lois Shaw and Ruth Small.

The police politely requested the pickets to depart and
the pickets politely refused to go ; whereupon the police po-
litely arrested them. The arrested women were: Jessica
Henderson, Ruth Small, Lou Daniels, Mrs. Frank Page,
Josephine Collins, Berry Pettier, Wilma Henderson, Mrs.
Irving Gross, Mrs. George Roewer, Francis Fowler,
Camilla Whitcomb, Mrs. H. L. Turner, Eleanor Calnan,
Betty Connelly, Betty Gram, Lois Warren Shaw, Rose
Lewis, Mrs. E. T. Russian.

They were charged with "loitering more than seven
minutes."

In the afternoon while the President was making a speech
in Mechanics Hall, a Watchfire demonstration occurred on
Boston Common. A vast crowd gathered about it. From
three o'clock in the afternoon until six, the women made
speeches.

The speakers were: Louise. Sykes, Mrs. C. C. Jack, Mrs.
Mortimer Warren, Mrs. Robert Trent Whitehouse, Agnes
H. Morey, Elsie Hill.

Louise Sykes burned the President's words — and they were
the words that he was speaking that very afternoon. Mrs.
Mortimer Warren and Mrs. C. C. Jack were arrested at six
o'clock and released immediately. Elsie Hill was detained on
the charge of speaking without a permit.

That day the President's carriage drove by the Boston
Headquarters. When Wilson saw the purple, white, and
gold colors, his expression changed. Quickly he looked the
other way. It was observed that he held across his knees
a newspaper whose flaring headlines announced that day's
picketing.

410 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

The Suffragists were tried on February 25, by what was
very like a Star Chamber proceeding, in the Judge's lobby
on the second floor of the court house. The Press was not
excluded from the hearing, but the public was. As usual,
the Suffragists did not assist the Court by giving names or
answering questions. As a result, in the words of the Suf-
fragist, " There is quite a family of Jane Does in Boston."
Sixteen of them= — everybody, except Wilma Henderson, who
was discovered to be a minor, and several others who could
not be identified — ^were sentenced to eight days in jail.

Some person — ^I quote from the Suffragitt — entirely un-
known and untraceable and unidentified, whom the policemen
gave the name " E. H. Howe " paid the fines of these women.
Katherine Morey, Ruth Small, and Betty Connelly were re-
leased on February 26 ; Josephine Collins on February 27 ;
the others came out two at a time.

As usual, the complaints of the Suffragists called the
attention of the people of the commmunity to the filthy con-
dition of their jail, which these experts pronounced one of
the worst in the country. It was characterized by the
" bucket system." In each cell stood two buckets for toilet
purposes. One contained the water in which they bathed.
The other was emptied once a day or once in two days,
according to the frequency with which the prisoner was
permitted to go into the jail-yard for the purpose.

The Boston papers gave this demonstration enormous
publicity. Boston institutions received in the press a muck-
raking which they had not experienced in years.

When President Wilson arrived in the Capitol at Wash-
ington— after this welcome in Boston — one of the first
pieces of legislation which he took up was the Federal
Suffrage Amendment. He went to the Capitol and con-
ferred with Senator Jones of New Mexico (Democrat)
Chairman of the Woman's Suffrage Committee, about the
Suffrage Resolution. After the vote of February 10,

APPEAL TO PRESIDENT ON HIS RETURN 411

Senator Jones of New Mexico refused to introduce the
Suffrage Resolution again, but Senator Jones of Washing-
ton, the ranking Republican, introduced the identical bill.
The President expressed his regret over the failure of the
measure on February 10, but he did not exert his influence
towards getting it passed.

The Sixty-fifth Congress was about to adjourn in a few
days. On F^ruary 28, in order to overcome the Parlia-
mentary difficulty of the reconsideration of a measure Trhich
had been once reconsidered. Senator Jones of New Mexico
introduced a Suffrage Amendment which was a variation of
the Anthony Amendment and so of course to Suffragists not
so satisfactory. It was referred to the Woman Suffrage
Committee. Soon after this, Senator Gay of Louisiana, who
had voted against the Amendment on February 10, an-
nounced that he would now vote for it. The President had
obtained this vote, but like all his action on Suffrage, it
came too late. There were only three days left and Senator
Jones of New Mexico made several attempts to obtain the
necessary unanimous consent for the consideration of his
Resolution, but he was unsuccessful. On Saturday, March 1,
Senator Wadsworth (Republican) objected. On Monday,
March 3, Senator Weeks (Republican) objected. On
Tuesday, March 4, Senator Sherman (Republican) objected.
The session came to an end in the Senate without action on
the Suffrage Amendment. The Republicans did not want
the Democrats to get the credit of passing it, and so pre-
vented it from coming to a vote.

XIV

THE APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT ON
HIS DEPARTURE

When Congress adjourned at noon March 3, President
Wilson left immediately for Europe, stopping in New York
to speak at the Metropolitan Opera House. Alice Paul
arranged at once a demonstration in New York as a
protest against the President leaving the Suffrage question
still unsettled. Her plan was to have every word on democ-
racy, uttered by the President inside the Opera House, im-
mediately burned outside the Opera House.

On the evening of March 4 a long line of Suffragists
started from the New York Headquarters at 13 East Forty-
first Street. Margaretta Schuyler carried the American
flag. Lucy Maverick followed her carrying the purple,
white, and gold tri-color. Florence De Shan carried:

ME. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOE UBEETT?

Beatrice Castleton bore:

ME. PEESISENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOE UBEETT?

The lettered banner for the occasion said:

ME. PEESIDENT, AMERICAN WOMEN PEOTEST AGAINST THE
DEFEAT OF SUFFEAGE FOE WHICH YOU AND YOUE PAETY ARE
EESPONSIBLE. WE DEMAND THAT YOU CAIiX AN EXTRA SESSION
OF CONGEESS IMMEDIATELY TO PASS THE SUFFEAGE AMEND-
MENT. AN AUTOCEAT AT HOME IS A POOE CHAMPION FOR
DEMOCRACY ABEOAD.

412

APPEAL TO PRESIDENT ON HIS DEPARTURE il3

At the corner of Fortieth Street and Broadway, this line
met a barrier of more than a hundred policemen. As the
Suffragists tried to pass through them, the police — assisted
by soldiers and sailors from the crowd — rushed upon them;
bore down the banners ; broke them.

In her book. Jailed for Freedom, Doris Stevens tells how
in perfect silence, but in the most business-like way, the New
York police clubbed the pickets. They arrested six of the
women; Alice Paul, Elsie Hill, Doris Stevens, Beatrice
Castleton, Lucy Maverick, Marie Bodenheim. These were
taken to the police station charged with disorderly conduct.
After half an hour, they were suddenly released.

They went back to Headquarters, re-formed into a sec-
ond line and started for the Opera House. At Fortieth
Street, the police again rushed them, tearing and breaking
their flags. The women were knocked down. Some were
trampled underfoot, and picked up later, limp and bleeding
from scrapes and bruises. Elsie Hill succeeded in retaining
her torch. She began her meeting of protest. A messenger
emerged from the Opera House with some of the words which
the President had just uttered, and she burned them. The
police rushed upon her, but they were too late. In the mean-
time, Alice Paul had succeeded in bringing the line of Suf-
fragists up to the wall of police. There the crowds dashed
on them again.

With the wonderful spirit which always characterized her,
Elsie Hill called out to one of the soldiers :

Did you fellows turn back when you saw the Germans come?
What would you have thought of any one who did? Do you
expect us to turn back now? We never turn back either — ^and
we won't until democracy is won !

Finally the police pushed the crowds back so far that
there was no audience. The pickets returned to Head-
quarters. There they found that all the evening long, law-
less citizens had been breaking in, carrying out great bundles
of banners and burning them in the street.

414 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Doris Stevens tells in Jailed for Freedom haw, when she
attempted to enter Headquarters, she was knocked down by
a hoodlum armed with one of their banner-poles.

That night and the following day, sailors, privates and
officers — ^military and naval — called at Suffrage Headquar-
ters to apologize for the conduct of other men in uniform.
They begged the women to believe that their action was
not representative of the attitude of service men in general.

The Sixty-sixth Congress convened in special session on
May 19, 1919, with the Republicans in control.

The Suffragists knew before this Congress convened, that
it would pass the Anthony Amendment.

This was how it happened.

THE PRESIDENT OBTAINS THE LAST VOTE AND
CONGRESS SURRENDERS

The Suffrage situation was a little confused. Senator Baird,
opposed to Suffrage, of the old Congress, was succeeded by
Edge, favorable to it. Pollock, favorable, was succeeded by
Dial, opposed. Vardaman of Mississippi, favorable, was suc-
ceeded by Harrison. Drew of New Hampshire, opposed, was
succeeded by Keyes. Hardwick of Georgia, opposed, was
succeeded by Harris. These three last new Senators — Har-
rison (Democrat), Harris (Democrat), and Keyes (Repub-
lican)— mantained a steady silence as to how they would
vote. It was necessary to get one of them.

Senator Harris was a close supporter of President Wilson.
Alice Paul knew that Matthew Hale, former. Chairman of
the Progressive National Committee, a Suffragist but not
a Democrat, was influential with the Administration. She
therefore suggested to Anita PoUitzer that she see Mr. Hale
at once and lay the situation before him. This was early in
May and Congress was convening May 19. Mr. Hale was
enthusiastic in his desire to help. The situation was com-
plicated by the fact that the President was in Europe. Mr.
Hale and Miss Pollitzer went over the Senate poll and from
among the most favorable non-committal senators chose Har-
ris of Georgia. He too was in Europe. Suddenly the field
of the campaign crossed three thousand miles of Atlantic
Ocean to France. The Woman's Party concentrated their
forces on getting President Wilson to influence Harris into
declaring for Suffrage. Mr. Hale worked steadily with a
group of people close to the President who rapidly increased
in numbers. Ultimately this pressure bore fruit in a con-
ference between Robert WooUey, Democratic Publicity Man-

415

416 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

ager in the 1916 campaign, Homer S. Cummings, Chairman
of the National Democratic Committee, William J. Cochran,
Director of Publicity of the Democratic Committee, Joseph
Tumulty, the President's Secretary, Senator Walsh. The
result of this conference was that Tumulty sent a cable
to the President, suggesting that he confer with Senator
Harris. Senator Harris was in Italy, but at the President's
request he went to France. Immediately came the news on
the cable that Senator Harris would support the Suffrage
Amendment.

Having secured Harris* vote. President Wilson cabled a
message to the new Congress on the night of May 20 which
contained the following reference to the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment :

Will you permit me, turning from these matters, to speak once
more and very earnestly of the proposed Amendment to the Con-
stitution which would extend the Suffrage to women and which
passed the House of Representatives at the last session of the
Congress? It seems to me that every consideration of justice and
of public advantage calls for the immediate adoption of that
Amendment and its submission forthwith to the legislatures of the
several States.

Throughout all the world this long delayed extension of the
Suffrage is looked for; in the United States, longer, I believe,
than anywhere else, the necessity for it, and the immense advan-
tages of it to the national life, has been urged and del)ated by
tromen and men who saw the need for it and urged the policy of
it when it required steadfast courage to be so much beforehand
with the common conviction ; and I, for one, covet for our country
the distinction of being among the first to act in a great reform.

As soon as Suffrage was assured by this sixty-fourth vote,
Senator Keyes and Senator Hale in a convulsive effort to
leap on the fast disappearing band-wagon announced that
they would vote for the Amendment, thus giving the Suf-
fragists two extra votes.

As this was a new Congress it was necessary for the House
to pass the Suffrage Amendment again. On May 21, 1919,
therefore, the new House passed it by three hundred and

CONGRESS SURRENDERS 417

four votes to eighty-nine — forty-two more than the required
two-thirds. It will be remembered that, when the previous
House passed it on January 10, 1918, the vote was two
hundred and seventy-four to one hundred and thirty-six —
only one vote more than the required two-thirds.

The Amendment then went to the Senate.

In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger
says :

Four months later, on June fourth, for tke fifth time in a
little more than a year, we sat in the Senate gallery to hear a
vote on the Suffrage Amendment. The new Congress, coming in
on March fourth, had brought us two more votes — we now had
our eleven. There was no excitement. The coming of the
women, the waiting of the women, the expectancy of the women,
was an old story. A whole year had passed in the winning of
two votes. Every one knew what the end would be now. It
was all very dull.

We walked slowly homeward, talking a little, silent a great
deal. This was the day toward which women had been strug-
gling for more than half a century! We were in the dawn of
woman's political power in America.

Several days before the Senate passed the Amendment,
Alice Paul left Washington to arrange for an immediate
ratification by the legislatures in session.

XVI

RATIFICATION

" WOMEN ARE FREE AT LAST IN ALL THE LAND "

Chant Royal

Waken, O Woman, to the trumpet somid

Greeting our day of long sought liberty;

Gone are the ages that have held us bound
Beneath a master, now we stand as he.

Free for world-service unto all mankind,

Free of the dragging chains that used to bind.
The sordid labor, the unnoticed woe.
The helpless shame, the unresisted blow.

Submission to our owner's least command —
No longer pets or slaves are we, for lo !

Women are free at last in all the land.

Long was the stony road our feet have found

From that dark past to the new world we see.

Each step with heavy hindrance hemmed around.
Each door to freedom closed with bolt and key;

Our feet with old tradition all entwined.

Untrained, uneducated, uncombined.

We had to fight old faiths of long ago.
And in our households find our dearest foe.

Against the world's whole weight we had to stand
Till came the day it could no more say no —

Women are free at last in all the land.

Around us prejudice, emotion-drowned.

Rose like a flood and would not let us free;

Women themselves, soft-bred and silken gowned.
Historic shame have won by their mad plea

To keep their own subjection; with them lined

All evil forces of the world we find.

No crime so brazen and no vice so low
But fought us, with inertia blind and slow.

And ignorance beneath its darkling brand.

With these we strove and still must strive, although

Women are free at last in all the land.
418

RATIFICATION 419

The serving squaw, the peasant, toil-embrowned.

The household drudge, no honor and no fee —
For these we now see women world-renowned.

In art and science, work of all degree.
She whom world progress had left far behind
Now has the secret of full life divined, —

Her largest service gladly to bestow;

Great is the gain since ages far below.
In honored labor, of head and hand ;

Now may her power and genius clearly show
Women are free at last in all the land.

Long years of effort to her praise redound,

To such high courage all may bend the knee.

Beside her brother, with full freedom crowned.
Mother and wife and citizen is she.

Queen of her soul and body, heart and mind.

Strong for the noble service God designed ;

See now the marching millions, row on row.
With steady eyes and faces all aglow.

They come! they come! a glad triumphant band, —
Roses and laurels in their pathway strow —

Women are free at last in all the land !

ENVOI

Sisters! we now must change the world we know
To one great garden where the child may grow.

New freedom means new duty, broad and grand.
To make a better world and hold it so

Women are free at last in all the land.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
The Suffragist, September, 1920.

The Suffrage Amendment had now passed both the House of
Representatives and the Senate, One step was necessary
before it became a part of the Constitution of the United
States — ratification by the legislatures of three-quarters of
the States in the Union — ^by thirty-six States out of forty-
eight. No time limit was set by Congress on ratification, but
naturally Suffragists wanted it to come as soon as possible.

420 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Some people believed it would take twenty years. They did
not reckon with Alice Paul however.

As soon as Congress passed the Suffrage Amendment, the
whole situation — as far as Suffrage was concerned — changed.
Now the President, the leaders in the Administration, the
leaders in the great political Parties became potential allies.

In four States — ^Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massa-
chusetts— the Legislatures were in regular session. In three
States — Texas, Ohio, Micl^gan— called on matters not per-
taining to Suffrage, the Legislatures were in special session.
The first undertaking of the Woman's Party was to get the
convening Legislatures to ratify and the remaining States to
call special sessions.

A race as to who should be the first to ratify, set in be-
tween Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois. All three ratified
on June 10. But Illinois had to re-ratify later on June 17
because of an error in printing the Amendment on its first
ratification on June 10. As between the other two, Wiscon-
sin won.

The story of Wisconsin's part in the race is interesting
and humorous. D. 6. James, the father of Ada James,
former Chairman of the Wisconsin Branch of the Woman's
Party, was spending the day in Madison when the Legisla-
ture ratified. His daughter was, of course, exceedingly de-
sirous that Wisconsin should achieve the honor of the first
ratification, and he was equally desirous of aiding her. He
assisted her in every way to avoid official delays and in get-
ting the action of the Legislature properly certified. He
commandeered his daughter's traveling bag, made a few
swift purchases of the necessities of traveling, and caught the
first train to Washington. He procured a signed statement
that Wisconsin's ratification was the first to be received from
the Department of State, on June 13. He brought his
trophy in triumph to Headquarters and told his story to
the newspaper men while the statement was being photo-
graphed.

That statement runs as follows :

RATIFICATION 421

DBPABTMEXT OP STATE
WASHINGTON.

June IS, 1919.
By direction of the Acting Secretary of State, I hereby ac-
knoivledge the receipt of a certified copy of the Joint Resolution
of the Legislature of the State of Wisconsin, ratifying the pro-
posed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ex-
tending the right of Suffrage to women, which was delivered by
Special Messenger, D. G. James, on June IS, 1919, and is the
first ratification of tke Amendment which has been received.

J. A. Towner,
Chief of Bureau.

Michigan, almost neck and neck in the race with Wisconsin,
ratified on June 10. Kansas, Ohio, and New York ratified on
June 16. Kansas was the first State to ,call its Legislature
in special session to ratify the Suffrage Amendment, the first
also in which the legislators paid their own expenses to at-
tend the special session. Illinois, held up by that mistake
in printing, ratified on June 17.

Pennsylvania, the first non-Suffrage State, ratified on
June 24, but not without a struggle. The session of the
Legislature was drawing to a close and it was diflicult to
get the measure introduced. The National Woman's Party
made a strenuous campaign. Mrs, Lawrence Lewis, Chair-
man of the Pennsylvania Ratification Committee, enlisted the
aid of Governor Sproul and in a conference with Senator
Penrose, who had been one of the strongest opponents to the
Suffrage Amendment in the United States Senate, persuaded
him to give his support to ratification. Mary Ingham, the
State Chairman, brought all the Woman's Party forces in the
State to bear upon the situation. The scene in the Senate
when the vote was taken was highly colorful. The floor was
a waving mass of purple, white, and gold. The tri-color
badges of the National Woman's Party appeared everywhere
on the floor and among the audience. There was such demand
for the Woman's Party colors that at the last moment the
stock had to be replenished. After the final victory in the

422 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

House, a parade of purple, white, and gold blazed its way
through Harrisburg.

Massachusetts followed close on Pennsylvania, ratifying
on June 25. Agnes Morey, the State Chairman of the Na-
tional Woman's Party, assisted by members of the State
branch, and by Betty Gram, national organizer, made the
intensive drive on the Legislature, which resulted in their
bringing the Bay State into camp. Here, Senator Lodge,
another hitherto unchangeable opponent to the Suffrage
Amendment in the United States Senate, did not oppose
the measure when it came up before the Massachusetts
Legislature, although he did not give the support which
Penrose of Pennsylvania gave.

Texas, the first Democratic " one-party " Stkte to do so,
ratified by special session on June 28. Iowa, after an ap-
peal for a special session from Senator Cummins to Gov-
ernor Harding — ^this was done at the instance of the
Woman's Party — ratified on July 2; Missouri ratified by
special session on July 3.

In the meantime the Legislature of Alabama, which only
convenes once in four years, met and although Suffragists
had not wanted this session and had very little hope of suc-
cess, they conducted a campaign for ratification. As it was
the first Democratic State in which there was difficulty, an
appeal was made to the President. He despatched the fol-
lowing telegrams:

White House,
» July 12, 1919.

Hon. Thomas E. Kilby, Governor,
Montgomery, Alabama.
I hope you will pardon me if I express my very earnest hope
that the Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States may be ratified by the great State of Alabama.

It would constitute a very happy augury for the future and
add greatly to the strength of the movement which, in my judg-
ment, is based upon the highest considerations, both of justice
and experience.

WooDROw Wilson.

RATIFICATION 423

White House,
July 14, 1919.
Hon. H. P. Merritt,

Speaker of House of Representatives,

Montgomery, Alabama.
I hope that you wiU not think that I am taking an unwar-
ranted liberty in saying that I earnestly hope, as do all friends
of the great liberal movement which it represents, that the legis-
lature of Alabama will ratify the Suffrage Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States. It would give added hope and
courage to the friends of justice and enlightened policy every-
where and would constitute the best possible augury for future
liberal policy of every sort.

WooDRow Wilson.

Alabama was the first State in which ratification was
defeated.

By this time, the Legislature in Georgia was convening.
Suffragists had no more hope of ratification here than in
Alabama. Nevertheless the campaign was made. They ap-
pealed to the national Democratic leaders for help and the
President despatched the following telegram:

White House,
July 14, 1919.
Governor Hugh M. Dorsey,
State Capitol,

Atlanta, Georgia.
I am profoundly interested in the passage of the Suffrage
Amendment to the Constitution, and will very much value your
advice as to the present status of the matter in the Georgia legis-
lature. I would like very much to be of help, for I believe
it to be absolutely essential to the political future of the country
that the Amendment be passed. It is absolutely essential to the
future of the Democratic Party that it take a leading part in this
great reform.

WooDRow Wilson.

Georgia defeated ratification July M, although the na-
tional Democratic leaders had aided in the entire campaign.

Arkansas ratified on July 20; Montana, July 20; Ne-
braska on August 2, all by special session.

424. THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Then came a lull in the ratification race. By August,
only two States west of the Mississippi, had ratified and
to the great surprise-^-and the intense disappointment — of
Suffragists, the West continued to maintain this lethargy.

In the meantime, there came a special session for good
roads in Virginia, another Democratic State. Since the ses-
sion was meeting, the Suffragists had no alternative but to
make the fight. In Virginia, they relied again on the Demo-
cratic national leaders to overcome the opposition of the
local Democratic leaders. As in the case of Alabama and
Georgia, although the national leaders did much, they did
not do enough. The President, however, despatched the fol-
lowing letter:

August 22, 1919-
President of the Senate,

Richmond, Virginia.

May I not take the liberty of expressing my profound interest
in the action which the Legislature of my native State is to take
in the matter of the Suffrage Amendment to the United States
Constitution. It seems to me of profound importance to our
country that this Amendment should be adopted and I venture to
urge the adoption on the Legislature. With utmost respect and
with the greatest earnestness,

WooDHOw Wilson.

Virginia did not ratify.

During all this period campaigns for special sessions con-
tinued. Typical of these is the following account by Julia
Emory, national organizer, in the July Suffragist :

"Good-by, good luck, and don't come back until Maryland
ratifies ! " This from the group of National Headquarters when
I waved farewell and started over the hills and far away toward
a special session in Maryland. Over the hills to Baltimore, and
then early the next morning, very, very early, the big bay boat
splashed down the Chesapeake to Cambridge where Governor
Harrington was spending the week-end.

" It's good of you to come," the Governor greeted me. " Not
good of me, but necessary. Governor^ to let you know how much

RATIFICATION 426

women need a special session in Maryland, now. Not just the
15,000 Maryland women of our organization who have asked
me to come to you, but all the women in the United States."
" Ah ! " said he. " You ladies are too impatient. We will have
a regular session in January, why can't you wait till then ? "
" Because," I answered, " there is no need of prolonging the
struggle. We have the necessary thirty-six States in view. We
want the special session so that we can vote for the next Governor
of^Maryland at the election this November, and for members of
our legislature at the same election." " But the question of
expense," he suggested. " That is easily eliminated," I said.
" Take Kansas, for example, where the legislators waived all
pay and mileage in order to push forward ratification. Surely
our Maryland men will do the same. And, anyhow, two days at
the outside would see the thing through. Think of the taxes
women have paid for so many years. Think of the war for
Democracy, think of the part women gave in human sacrifice,
service and money, and then tell me if anybody would say that
a special session called for the purpose of giving them a voice
in their government would take too much out of the State treas-
ury." " That's true," said the Governor, " but special sessions are
unpopular, and suppose the resolution should fail— — " " Oh ! "
~I said with a beaming smile of relief, "if what you want is
a convincing poll, I'll give you that," thinking of the poll which,
though still not yet completed, already showed a majority pledged
in both Houses. " Next Tuesday," said he. " Now," said I.
It was then Friday. But the Governor said Tuesday, and told
me that in the meantime he was going to " feel around " for
sentiment. And so did I.

First I went to a State Senator. " Why the special session.^ "
he wanted to know. And when he found the thirty-six States
were in view, he sat up. " The thing is upon us," he said. We
went over the situation from the political point of view from be-
ginning to end. He was a Democrat. " And," said he in a low
voice, " if I had to bet on the fall elections, I'd — ^well, all I
have to say is, if the Democrats want to get any credit, it'll have
to be by special session."

"Will you say that to the Governor?" I asked.

" I will, tonight," he said, " and as for the question of ex-
pense, I for one, will waive my pay." Just then the train
whistled. " You can't make it," said the Senator. " We are
some distance from the station." " I must," I said. " I have to
see another man."

The Senator laughed and called to a man in an automobile and

4-26 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

away I whisked and the conductor helped me to hop on the train
as it moved off.

The man at the other end was in Chicago. And the next train
was due in six hours. Then on to a little town where I sat on a
pile of baggage and waited until the Republican delegate arrived.
" I hope," he said, " that the Republicans will take the initia-
tive and ask for a special session. Yes, you bet, I'll waive my
pay.

There a Democrat, who said he would fight a special session to
a finish. " Knowing what it will mean to your Party if you do? "
I asked. We went into it from the political viewpoint. Then
he saw the end in sight. We carefully went over the thirty-six
States. He rubbed his head and looked at the opposite wall (or it
may have been the State of Maryland he was gazing at so in-
tently). " You know," he said finally, " I am an anti-Suffragist
at heart, but at the same time I am no fool. The thing is here,
and the point is, what is the best thing to do about it. I will not
urge a special session, but I will not fight it."

Then on Tuesday, Mrs. Donald Hooker, our Maryland Chair-
man, went over the poll with the Governor. Man by man, they
considered the delegates and senators. Yes, this one was sure,
that one was practically sure but wasn't pledged and so we
wouldn't count him yet, another was hopeful, another was hope-
less, and the then uncompleted poll stood fifty-nine to thirty-
eight in the House and thirteen to eleven in the Senate. We
looked expectantly at the Governor. " I need more time to
consider," was what he said.

" In the meantime," said Mrs. Hooker to me as we went out,
" we will complete the poll as fast as possible. A big majority
will surely convince him that it must go through."

So off to Southern Maryland and the counties around Wash-
ington. One legislator I found in Washington in a big, cool
office, dressed in a Palm Beach suit and on the point of depart-
ing for a vacation. I looked at him and thought of canoes and
bathing suits which had been shoved aside for me till after the
special session. " I hope you will have a good time," I told him,
" Mine will come after you have voted ' yes.' " He smiled hap-
pily and his reply made me smile happily too.

One man was in his wheat field. 'Way into the country we
went by automobile where no trains ran and no electric cars
penetrated. We r'eached the town and inquired at the hardware

store for our legislator: " Mr. F ? Oh, he don't live here,

he just has his mail sent here, he lives 'bout fo'teen mile round
yonder." " Fo'teen mile round yonder," we finally found his

RATIFICATION 427

home.^ " Well, you see it's this way," explained his wife. " He
might've been home, but Mr. So-and-So is thrashing wheat and
my husband went over to help him get it in before the storm."
We noticed clouds in the sky. We went on to the So-and-Sos'
farm. At the farmhouse, we all alighted. My companions im-
mediately made for the chicken yard where they made friends
with Mrs. So-and-So and helped her to feed the chickens. After-
ward, they told us of the strong Suffrage speech the farmer's
wife had made to them, who being the mother of eight children —
six girls and two boys — ^had come to the conclusion that nobody
needed Suffrage more than the farmer's wife. Two of the little
girls took me out to the field, up a dusty white road we walked,
climbed rail fences and — oh! how good! picked a few black-
berries— and came at last to the thrashing field. " No," said my
man, " I can't see that Suffrage is right, and I can't therefore
vote for it." " Did you think the war was right .-' " I asked.
"Oh! of course." "And why did we go to war.!"' I asked.
" To get democracy," he answered. " Exactly," I said. " And
President Wilson said that democracy was 'the right of all
those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own govern-
ment.' " " Now look here, Missie," said my friend, " I believe
women are superior beings to men, and if they were to vote,
they'd have to be equals. Now look at this hay stack. You

could no more pitch hay than " " Will you lend me your

fork? " I asked. I stuck in the form, gave it the peculiar little
twist, then the little flop, squared my shoulder and up it went
on the wagon. Three times. " Well, I'll be jiggered," laughed
the legislator, " labor is scarce and now I'U know where to look
for help when I need it ! " " Yes," said I. " And we have
come to you for help. We need your vote."

On to the next, we climbed into the machine and sped away.

And so it runs. Sometimes, we strike an obstinate anti who
will not even listen to what we have to say, even though I have
traveled weary miles in trains and on foot to find him. Some-
times we have to put up at a funny little village hotel because an
inconsiderate legislator has gone out of town for a day. Some-
times they are cordial, and offer all sorts of help. Sometimes
the road lies through beautiful country, occasionally in hot,
stuffy little towns. At fastest, it is slow work. Why do legis-
lators live so far apart and in such inaccessible places? And
generally so very far from anything to eat! Some evenings as
it begins to grow dark, I am keenly aware that I have had nothing
to eat since breakfast. But that is part of the game, and after
all wkat does it matter when I can write to Headquarters before

428 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

I fall into bed, " We can add the following names of legislators
to the list of pledged, and all of them have offered to waive their
pay." So far only one has refused to waive pay.

So, with a big majority in both houses pledged to vote for the
measure, there remains nothing but the calling of the special
session. This, it is up to Governor Harrington to do at once.

And this; according to the following answer to Attorney-
General Palmer's letter, he still refuses to do. Yet the Governor
must surely yet see the light, as he knows that there IS no ques-
tion of defeat if a special session is called to ratify.

The poll which has been so carefully and accurately drawn
up demonstrates that fact most convincingly, and we are going
to keep right on working until Governor Harrington sees it
that way!

Maryland defeated ratification later.

Owing to the fact that most of the governors who must
call special sessions were Republicans, the National Woman's
Party made a drive on the national Republican leaders to
get them to act upon these governors. On August 14, Abby
Scott Baker went to the Governors' Conference at Salt Lake
City where, assisted by Louise Garnett, State Chairman of
the Woman's Party in Utah, she succeeded in getting gover-
nors whose Legislatures had already ratified to organize an
informal committee to work upon those whose Legislatures
had not ratified. ISome of these governors of these back-
ward States — or rather some of the backward governors of
these States — made tentative promises in regard to special
sessions, but these promises were so vague that Mrs. Baker
started, at the close of the Governors' Conference, to Cali-
fornia. We shall hear about her work there later.

Minnesota ratified on September 8; New Hampshire on
September 10, both in special session. Utah — but there is a
story about Utah.

Utah was backward. Alice Paul interested Isaac Russell,
a newspaper man, and a native of Utah, in the situation. He
prevailed upon Senator Smoot, Republican, to write a letter
to Alice Paul saying that he was disappointed that Governor
Banberger, Democrat, was not calling a special session.

RATIFICATION , 429

Alice Paul gave this letter to the Press, and of course, the
Republican papers of Utah carried it. Alice Paul waited
a while and then she sent Anita Pollitzer to see the Demo-
cratic Congressmen from Utah, and to put it clearly to them
that the responsibility for the delay was on their Party. As
a i^esult of Miss PoUitzer's representations, Congressman
Welling, a Democrat and a friend of Governor Banberger,
wrote a strong telegram to him in which he urged him to set
the date of a special session at once. Early the next morn-
ing, Congressman Welling telephoned Headquarters that
the telegram had brought results and read a message from
Governor Banberger announcing the date on which he
would call that special session. Utah ratified on Septem-
ber 30.

In the meantime, we must go back to Abby Scott Baker,
whom we left on her way to California. She found that an
enormous amount of work had been done by Genevieve Allen,
the State Chairman for California, and by the members of
her organization, assisted by Vivian Pierce, a national or-
ganizer. Governor Stevens, however, seemed immovable on
the subject of a special session. But with additional assist-
ance from Mrs. William Kent, one of its national officers,
the Woman's Party inaugurated a vigorous newspaper
campaign. Governor Stevens found himself inundated by an
avalanche of telegrams, letters, petitions, resolutions; and
finally of entreaties of the men who surrounded him. Gov-
ernor Stevens is a Republican, and the Democratic women
began to organize for ratification. Senator Phelan, Demo-
crat, gave them his assistan<ie. National leaders of both
Parties brought pressure to bear. It was impossible to
resist this current. Governor Stevens issued a call for a
special session for November 1, and on that date California

ratified.

The Woman's Party refers to Maine as the first close call.
This story is very interesting. Maine called a special ses-
sion, but Maine was, so to speak, on the fence in regard
to Suffrage, as, when the National Woman's Party ap-

430 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

proached the State on the subject of ratification, a referen-
dum on Presidential Suffrage was pending. So important
was the situation there that Alice Paul joined Mrs. Lawrence
Lewis and Mrs. Robert Treat Whitehouse, the State Chair-
man, who were working hard. In Maine, too, the antis were
troublesome. They managed to introduce a resolution in
the Legislature proposing postponement on the subject of
ratification until after the referendum. The President and
Secretary of the State Federation of Labor sent an official
appeal to the Legislature to vote for this resolution. Imme-
diately the Woman's Party in Washington obtained a letter
from Secretary Morrison of the American Federation of
Labor to the Maine Federation, stating that the A. F. of L.
stood strongly for ratification. Mrs. Whitehouse gave this
letter to the newspapers ; gave copies to every member of the
Legislature. She conferred with the President of the State
Federation, persuaded him to repudiate his former letter and
to issue an appeal for the support of ratification. National
leaders of both the Democratic and Republican Parties sent
telegrams to legislators. Maine ratified on November 5 — ^by
a narrow margin of four votes.

After a long siege by the Woman's Party on the Governor,
North Dakota ratified, in special session on December 1.

In the case of South Dakota, Governor Norbeck agreed
to call a special session of the Legislature if the majority
of the members would serve without mileage. Late in Novem-
ber, Alice Paul received a telegram from Governor Norbeck
saying that the session would not be called as he was sixteen
answers short of a majority who were willing to serve with-
out expense to the State. Alice Paul immediately sent Anita
PoUitzer to the Capitol to see Senator Sterling of South
Dakota. Miss Pollitzer showed him Governor Norbeck's
telegram to Miss Paul and told him that the Suffragists
would be greatly disappointed if the Republican Legislature
of South Dakota refused to meet, and a Repuljlican Governor
refuse to call a special session. He agreed that was a politi-
cal mistake and in Miss PoUitzer's presence, sent telegrams

RATIFICATION 431

to liis law partner, the chief politician of the State, telling
him to do everything possible to have a special session called ;
to the Chairman of the Republican State Committee, asking
him to telegraph each member of the Legislature, urging him
to answer the Governor's appeal and to agree to come to the
special session as the Governor had stipulated, at his own
expense. Examining this situation superficially — or even
closely — one would think that Miss Pollitzer had done every-
thing that was possible. But there is no reckoning with
Alice Paul. When Miss Pollitzer returned to Headquarters,
Miss Paul said simply, " We can do more."

That afternoon Miss Pollitzer visited Mr. McCarl, the
Secretary of the Republican Congressional Committee in
Washington, who sent telegrams to all the Republican
leaders in the State, urging that they make clear to the Re-
publican Governor and to the members of the Legislature the
importance tp the Republican Party of a good record on
ratification. Three days later, a telegram came to' Wash-
ington announcing that a majority, willing to serve at their
own expense, bad been secured. South Dakota ratified on
December 4*.

Colorado, the last State to ratify in 1919, did so on De-
cember 12 — ^but only after a long campaign, the result of
local conditions.

January of 1920, in which five States came into the fold,
was a highly successful month for the ratification record.
Rhode Island and Kentucky ratified in regular session on
January 6. Oregon, whose Governor broke his promises many
times, finally ratified in regular session on January 12. The
State Chairman, Mrs. W. J. Hawkins, campaigned vigor-
ously here, assisted by her State organization and Vivian
Pierce, national organizer. Much equally vigorous work in
Washington supplemented her.

Indiana ratified January 16 in special session.

Wyoming was the last of the five January States. For
months. Governor Carey had refused to call a special session.
He had been peculiarly obstinate at the Governors' Con-

432 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

ference at Salt Lake City on August 14, where he had stated
that he would not call a special session even if it were needed
as the very last State. Wyoming, it should be remembered,
was the pioneer Suifrage State. Representatives of the
Woman's Party went at once to Wyoming. Mrs. Richard
Wainwright, who was staying in the West, made it her special
work to bring pressure on the Governor. Alice Paul sent
Anita Pollitzer to the Capitol to talk with the Congressman
and Senators from Wyoming. They said that circumstances
had arisen which made it impossible foi^ them to ti'y to force
the Governor. On the trolley car Miss Pollitzer met Frank
Barrow, Secretary to Congressman Mondell, and asked him
for help. He agreed to give it. Mr. Barrow had edited the
Cheyenne Tribune, the leading Republican paper of the State,
when Anita Pollitzer campaigned in Wyoming the year be-
fore. He began urging that a special session be called and
charged the Governor with hurting the Republican record on
Suffrage. Immediately a statement appeared in the Press
from the Governor, saying that he would call a special ses-
sion, but not at the expense of the State ; that the men must
come without pay or mileage. Wyoming is a huge State,
and this was in January, a month of terrific snow storms.
Unless extra political pressure was applied, the legislators
might not come from far-away ranches at their own ex-
pense. In the meantime, whenever politicians from Wyoming
arrived in Washington, members of the Woman's Party saw
them at once. Pferty members learned that a close political
advisor of Governor Carey was going to spend one night in
Washington. They called on him at his hotel and told him
that the responsibility of all this delay lay squarely on the
Republicans and on Governor Carey. He was highly indig-
nant at the attitude of the Woman's Party and their Press
campaign. Nevertheless, he said that the Governor was
going to call a special session at once.

It was necessary to bring extra political pressure to bear,
so long as Governor Carey's request for a special session put
it up to the members of 'the Legislature, themselves, whether

RATIFICATION 438

they would attend that session. Anita Pollitzer went to the
Capitol and got the political line-up from the political leaders.
They divided the State into districts for her and told her
who were the political bell-wethers of each district. With
this information, Miss Pollitzer went to Dr. Simeon Fess,
Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Com-
mittee. Dr. Fess sent strong telegrams to every one of the
Republican State leaders asking them to round up the legis-
lators of their district, to see that they agreed to go to the
special session at their own expense ; asked them for a reply ;
told them he would wire again if a reply was not received.

On January 27, both Houses of the Wyoming Legislature
ratified unanimously.

The Governor of Nevada, a Democrat, had refused to call
a special session for many months because he was afraid that
other measures besides Suffrage would be brought up; but
after a long pressure brought upon him by the national Demo-
cratic leaders, he was induced to call the session. Nevada
ratified February 7.

The next State in the ratification line was New Jersey, and
New Jersey gave the Woman's Party a terrific fight. Mrs.
J. J!^. H. Hopkins, Stfite Chairman, realized that with both
the Republican and Democratic bosses opposed to Suffrage,
New Jersey would never ratify unless the Woman's Party
made it a matter of the greatest political importance to the
majority Party — the Republican Party. She engineered the
fight, assisted by Betty Gram and Catherine Flanagan.

In Washington, Alice Paul sent Anita Pollitzer to Frank
Barrow, Secretary to Congressman Mondell, who had assisted
the Woman's Party so signally in the Wyoming campaign,
and asked him to go to New Jersey. " But I could speak
with no authority," he said, " and Mr. Mondell will need me
here." Anita Pollitzer told him that the Woman's Party
would attend to all those matters. She then went again to
Dr. Fess, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional
Committee, and told him that they were likely to lose New
Jersey unless somebody was immediately sent from the Con-

434- THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

gressional Committee to assist. At once, Dr. Fess wrote a
letter to Mr. Barrow authorizing him to go to New Jersey in
behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Miss Pollitzer next went to Senator Poindexter, Chairman of
the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and told him
that the Woman's Party wanted Mr. Barrow to go to New
Jersey ; that Dr. Fess had asked him to urge ratification on
behalf of the Republican Congressional Committee and that
the Woman's Party wished him in addition to urge on behalf
of the Republican Senatorial Committee. Senator Poin-
dexter, thereupon, wrote a letter to Mr. Barrow authorizing
him to go to New Jersey in behalf of the ratification of the
Suffrage Amendment.

Last of all. Miss Pollitzer went to Congressman Mondell
and broke the news to him that the Woman's Party would
like to commandeer his Secretary to go to New Jersey for as
long a time as necessary, to work among Republicans for the
ratification of Suffrage. Following an entirely natural im-
pulse, Mr. Mondell said, " I am vitally interested in Suf-
frage, but I must say I need my own secretary in Washing-
ton ! " Miss Pollitzer of course represented to 'him how
much it meant to the National Woman's' Party to have Mr.
Barrow go — ^that it would take at the most only a week
out of his work ; and that it might mean several years out of
the lives of the women, if the Republicans allowed New Jersey
to fail in ratification. She added that the responsibility was
on him and got up to leave. Mr. Mondell said, " Tell Mr.
Barrow to be in his office in ten minutes, as I shall want to
see him there." Fifteen minutes later. Miss Pollitzer called
on Mr. Barrow, who told her that Mr. Mondell had asked
him to go to New Jersey. In a letter to Miss Paul, Mr. Bar-
row listed the obstacles which he found in the way in the big
New Jersey battle :

1. The last Republican State platform on' which members of
the legislature were elected, declared for a referendum.

2. The Republican State Chairman was an open and avowed
anti-Suffragiat.

RATIFICATION 435

3. The biggest Republican boss in N. J. was actively hostile
to the Suffrage movement.

4. The biggest Democratic boss of N. J. was actively hostile
to the Suffrage movement.

5. The tremendous political influence exerted through the
liquor interests was actively and openly working against them.

New Jersey ratified on February 10.
In regard to the New Jersey campaign, Betty Gram has
a vivacious article in the Suffragist on March, 1920.
She says :

Miracles happen sometimes — but the ratification of the Suf-
frage .^uendjnent on February 10th by the New Jersey Legis-
lature was not the result of a miracle.

Every organizer of the Woman's Party who had worked in the
State whispered in my ear, " Don't try New Jersey — it will never
ratify." It was therefore with reluctance that at the bidding of
Miss Paul and Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, New Jersey State Chair-
man, I invaded the territory of the enemy and went to Trenton,
where on September 30th both the Republican and Democratic
State platform committees were sitting.

Despite all our efforts the Republicans that day in open con-
vention under the . leadership of Republican State Chairman
Edward Caspar Stokes, declared in favor of a referendum,
though each individual who had given a pledge to his constituents
to support the Suffrage Amendment was left free to do so.

In significant contrast to this, the Democrats, holding con-
vention just across the street, declared for immediate ratification.
This was done upon the persistent demand of the Democratic
candidate for governor, Edward I. Edwards, at the . probable
cost of the support of the most influential Democratic boss in
the State, James R. Nugent, who in open convention fought the
issue bitterly and pledged his twelve Essex County Assembly
candidates against immediate ratification. They ran on that

issue.

We watched the election returns on November 4th with acute
anxiety. It was a critical point, for we had much to gain and
everything to lose. The decision brought joy in one respect.
Edwards, a Suffrage governor, was victorious, but alas! the re-
sult showed that the Republicans, who had adopted the referen-
dum plank in their platform, had carried the Le^slature. They
had a majority in the Senate of fifteen to six and in the Assembly

436 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

of tkitty-thiee to twenty-seven — and among the twenty-seven
Democratic members were the twelve Nugent men from Essex.

We had only a fighting chance at best — but we set about the
task resolutely. As usual, the first duty was to obtain an
authentic report of the position of each newly elected man. We
had secured pre-primary pledges from the fifteen Edwards
Democrats, as well as a few from some staunch Suffragists on
the Republican side, but only a very few, for not only was
their State Chairman opposed, but the Republican boss of South
Jersey — former Senator Davis Baird, whom we knew would
fight us to the end — ^through his tremendous influence.

In a few days our poll was completed. The Senate showed a
bare but safe majority of one, for there we needed eleven votes.
In the House our poll was much less encouraging. We needed
thirty-one votes out of sixty — and we could count only twenty-
five positive yeas. Where and how to get the six more sup-
porters out of a Republican opposition was the bewildering —
almost stupefying question. Political pressure — both national

and local ^was the one way out. The time had passed for

meetings at which to arouse sentiment of constituents — only pres-
sure of the most intimate nature would move a vote to our side.

We first set about to choose our leaders in the respective
houses. We wanted wide-awake, active militants — parliamen-
tarians who would not demand the assurance of the usual excess
number of votes before moving ; men who would take up the fight
eagerly, revel in the chance of victory, and with odds against
them enter enthusiastically into a neck to neck race.

At a diimer given by the National Woman's Party at Newark
on December 10th we accomplished our purpose — Senator Wm.
B. MacKay, Republican, made an impassioned speech, publicly
accepting the responsibility of leading our forces in the upper
House. At this same dinner the newly chosen speaker-elect of
the Assembly, W. Irving Glover, Republican, pledged his un-
equivocal support and straightforwardly stated that he would do
all in his power to bring New Jersey into the line of ratified
States. The happiest moment of the evening arrived when Re-
publican majority leader of the House, Harry Hershfield, made
known his position on the Suffrage issue and expressed his desire
that New Jersey ratify. Great applause greeted his words that
the backbone of opposition had been broken and that he antici-
pated victory and would exert every influence to that end. The
day after the dinner, Mr. Hershfield permitted to be given out
from our Headquarters a statement declaring that he would lead
the fight in the House.

RATIFICATION 437

The next day I went to Washington. The interest of the two
United States Senators from New Jersey as well as the Congress-
men had to be recruited. Soon letters and telegrams were pour-
ing into the State from Washington. The resolution passed
unanimously by the Republican National Committee in Washing-
ton on December 10th did much to strengthen our position and
before long the importance of the issue from a national stand-
point began to dawn on the vision of some New Jersey Repub-
licans.

The situation took on a more hopeful aspect — a few finishing
touches only were needed — ^but just whose magic touch to summon
was the problem.

We were at a standstill. Two votes were still needed to reach
the required thirty-one. Then something happened.

Inauguration day came and with it the tactical error of the
opposition which acted as a boomerang and assured the House
majority leader his position as head of his party. It gave into
our hands the strategic parliamentary advantage — which we had
coveted and desired for so long. An unexpected resolution
calling for a referendum on all constitutional amendments, in-
cluding pending ones, wedged in among routine measures, was
surreptitiously introduced on Inauguration Day by Assemblyman
Coles of Camden and by a viva voce vote passed before more
than fifteen members knew what had happened. Twelve Nugent
men from Essex and three Baird men from Camden were re-
sponsible for the railroading through of this resolution. This
act of course was a planned and deliberately malicious thrust
at Suffrage.

The House adjourned and the anti-Suffragists believe they
had scored a point. The reckoning came later. Editorials ap-
peared in papers all over the State denouncing such methods.
On the following Monday the House reconsidered the Coles'
resolution with a vote of forty-four to thirteen — and we pro-
ceeded with our fight. The ratification resolution was introduced
immediately after and sent to the Federal Relations Com-
mittee, which was favorable to our measure — four to one.
The referendum resolution had gone to the same com-
mittee.

Then the problem came of getting our resolution reported out
first. We did not have a sufficient number of votes to hazard the
chance of having the referendum resolution considered before
ours, though some of our supporters preferred this procedure.
A conference of leaders was called, to which I summoned Miss
Paul, for the political leaders had had little comparative experi-

438 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

ence in handling constitutional amendments, 'whU.e she had
sponsored ratification in two dozen States.

A hearing before the committee was held on February 2nd.
Our State Chairman, Mrs. Hopkins, and United States Senator
Selden Spencer of Missouri, who came from Washington, made
splendid appeals for Suffrage. That evening our resolution
passed the Senate eighteen to two as a result of the Republicans
having caucused in its support, after an appeal had been made
to them to do so by Senator Spencer. There was no dissenting
Democratic vote in the upper House. That same evening the
House rejected the minority report of the Committee and ac-
cepted the favorable majority report on our measure. It was
voted to a second reading and made the first order of business for
Monday evening, February 9th.

That same week influenza seized various members of the Legis-
lature alnd four of our most ardent supporters were ill. Their
absence meant defeat. Every day we anxiously inquired after
their welfare. For a time it seemed we would never have our
thirty-one yeas together.

The day before the vote the National Republican Senatorial
and Congressional committees sent a representative, Mr. Frank
Barrow, from Washington to our aid. He worked with the doubt-
ful Republican members.

At last the long looked-for moment arrived. At eight o'clock
on Monday evening the Legislature which was either to reject or
accept the ratification resolution convened.

The fight began with opposing men as aggressors and soon one
resolution after another was being rushed to the speaker's desk
as a subterfuge of delay. Roll calls were asked on each and
every occasion, and as we strained our ears for the yeas and nays
we received each time a shock at the transference of a vote. A
^roU call to postpone lacked only one of the necessary thirty-one
votes.

Debate lasted imtil one o'clock Tuesday morning — five hours of
continuous fiery combat — and then a motion to move the previous
question fell like a pall on the troubled assembly. With trem-
bling, tired hands we turned to our last spotless roll call and
began to mark the records of men on the sands of time. Clear
and decisive came the yeas — inaudible and slow came the nays,
and after them all the called, " Joint resolution number one
adopted — ^thirty-four to twenty-four."

Silence followed for long seconds and then the wild, almost
hysteric cheers of women reverberated through the halls. Never
had there been such a demonstration of joy in the New Jersey

RATIFICATION 439

Capitol and out of the galleries poured countless smiling women —
bearing banners of victory, to take their places among the liber-
ated peoples.

Idaho, which ratified on February 11; Arizona on Feb-
ruary 12; New Mexico on February 19; Oklahoma on
February 27 did so only after a struggle, but their cases
were special only in detail.

In the meantime, there had been two January defeats,
Mississippi and South Carolina ; two February defeats, Vir-
ginia for the second time, and Maryland. •

West Virginia, which came into the fold on March 10,
presents to ratification another dramatic story. I quote an
article by Mary Dubrow, in the April Suffragist.

They are all true — the old adages about pride and falls,
boasters who forget to rap on wood, chickens and hatchings —
West Virginia proved it.

Last August the card catalogue files carefully compiled by
Maud Younger, Legislative Chairman of the Woman's Party,
showed an overwhelming majority for ratification in the West
Virginia legislature. To check up on this poU, a member of
the Legislature took another and discovered the same over-
whelming majority. Our National Headquarters kept in touch
with the situation until the special session was called.

The West Virginia delegation in Congress, the Democratic
governor of the State, and the Republican National Committee-
man, all alike expressed certainty of ratification.

As I left for West Virginia I confided to every one I met how
chappy I was to go to a State which would probably ratify
unanimously, and every leading citizen I interviewed for the
first four days confirmed my expectation.

Then the legislators began to assemble at the Kanawha Hotel,
the political center of Charleston, I had their written pledges
and I approached them more to exchange pleasant anticipations
of victory than for any other purpose, and my fall began — a
gradual inch-by-inch fall. The first man I met said: "Well, I
haven't been here very long and I don't know just how I will
vote. You see our great State voted Suffrage down by a ma-
jority of " And the second man said the same thing, and

the third repeated the remark.

Then the splendid men who were leading our fight and who
were standing staunch came to me with appalling reports of the

UO THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

wavering of this one and that one. It was an opposition stam-
pede— nothing less.

I hurriedly told the Washington Headquarters the situation
and the National Bepublican Senatorial Committee was prevailed
upon to send a representative, Mr. Frank Barrow, to West Vir-
ginia to urge the Republicans in the Legislature to remember
their Party and vote for ratification.

Our chairman in West Virginia, Mrs. William Gay Brown, a
staunch Democrat, conferred with the Democrats and made them
appreciate their responsibility. Miss Anita Pollitzer, legislative
secretary of the Woman's Party working in Washington, con-
vinced Senator Sutherland that his State could not afford to
defeat the Amendment.

We re-polled the House of Delegates and one hour before the
vote was taken in that body on March 4 we knew we had forty
votes and the opposition had forty-one, and that there were six
members who would tell neither friend, enemy, nor Party leader
how they stood — the silent six they were called.

In the Senate we were certain of fourteen both ways. But
the Republican leaders were sure they could get one more. Some
of them were even sure they could get three ! Senator Harmer,
who led the fight in the Senate and who is one of the best par-
liamentarians in the State, nevertheless was not for allowing
ratification to come to a vote.

The vote was taken-^and the clerk announced it — " fourteen
to fourteen." Senator Harmer saved the situation by changing
his vote and making reconsideration possible. The Senate ad-
journed. It was the turn of the House. When the debate began
speeches were tossed from man to man like balls in a game, and
never for four hours was there a moment of silence in the House.
At six o'clock the vote was taken. Forty-six men, in the face of
the action of the Senate, stood sound — not as Republicans, not
as Democrats, but as Suffragists, every one of the silent six
voting for us.

With the announcement of the tie in the Senate, national
leaders who had paid no attention to our repeated warnings of
peril sprang into action. Representative Fess, Chairman of the
Republican Congressional Committee, immediately' wired the
following telegram to Republicans:

" Can not overestimate importance from Party standpoint of
Republican legislature West Virginia ratification and desire to
maintain this position. Any attempt substitute referendum
would be grave mistake. Can we count on your active and imme-
diate aid ? "

RATIFICATION 441

Senator Poindexter, Chairman of the Republican Senatorial
Committee, told of the situation by leaders in Washington, sent
the following message:

" Republican Senatorial Committee is deeply concerned over
result of Suffrage vote in your Senate. We count on West Vir-
gihia's ratification. Republican Party has pioneered every fight
for Suffrage and every State where Republicans had control of
the Legislature has ratified. Party will be greatly embarrassed if
West Virginia breaks that most gratifying record through failure
to co-operate with us in this critical time."

Senator Capper and Senator Kendrick likewise sent messages
urging the Republicans to reconsider this fatal step.

Senator Owen, Senator Walsh, and Attorney General Palmer,
Secretary Daniels and Secretary Baker all used every effort to
make it a Democratic victory.

As a climax to all this, the President himself, realizing that
one Democratic vote could save the situation, sent every opposed
Democratic member of the Senate a telegram urging him to cast
the deciding vote. If we could not obtain one vote from this
pressure, there was only one chance left to us.

Senator Bloch, who was wintering in California, had asked
to be paired for Suffrage. The opposition refused to consider
his request and no pressure could obtain from the opposed Sena-
tors this ordinary Senatorial courtesy. A long-distance call was
put ip for Senator Bloch in San Francisco. That night he started
east.

Now came the test of all our resources and of the loyalty
of our friends, and I do not believe that any stauncher loyalty
has been displayed by any group of men in the whole ratification
campaign than by the fourteen Suffrage senators of the West
Virginia Legislature.

For five days these fourteen men had to wait in Charleston
while the fifteenth vote crossed the continent. Every day they
held conferences and buoyed one another up, while Betty Gram,
who had been sent from Washington to help in the campaign, and
I hovered round about trying, with radiant cheerfulness, to instill
into every one the feeling: " Senator Block is on his way and all
is well with the world." Telegraphic despatches constantly ar-
rived saying Senator Block was in New Mexico or Omaha or some
other remote place that gradually grew nearer.

Our enemies once more began their attack in the House. The
opposition tried to reconsider and were beaten ; tried a referendum
and were beaten; tried to prevent consideration from being
tabled and were beaten. Nevertheless, all of the delegates of

442 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

the lower House had to be held in Charleston as well as the
Senators. One man got as far as his comfortable seat in the
train, but we heard that he had bought a ticket. I took a taxi-
cab. Miss Gram and Mrs. PufEenbarger, Chairman of the Wom-
an's Committee of West Virginia, took another. We arrived
simultaneously and that bewildered delegate was rushed off the
train and back to his less comfortable seat in the Capitol.

At one time it looked as if we could not get enough votes to
recess from day to day until Senator Bloch arrived, and our
friends prepared for continuous session. They carried pillows
in their hands and playing-cards in their pockets, and we on the
outside had our arrangements made for relaying them sandwiches
and coffee. It was the opposition that weakened in the face
of this ordeal.

Then came Monday, the day set for Mr. Bloch's arrival and
suddenly a senator disappeared. We thought that he had been ab-
ducted. His thirteen Suffrage colleagues rushed about searching
for him. Miss Gram and I walked the streets, even daring to
peer into barber-shop windows.

At last the mystery was solved. He had gone home and was
delayed by a blizzard.

The Senate did not convene until he reappeared at 2: 50 and
saved the situation.

And then Senator Bloch arrived — one man alone in two coaches
bouncing behind an engine that broke the world record for speed.
He had chosen the special train rather than the airplane that
was put at his disposal by the Republicans, but, as he said him-
self, he was traveling in the air most of the way to Charleston.
As he got off the train, pale but smiling, he was grasping his
golf sticks desperately in one hand and a thermos bottle of coffee
in the other. And at 2 : 40 a.m., when his private train pulled in,
the town was out to meet him.

While the senator tried to catck his breath, he gave this state-
ment to the press:

" The fourteen men who have so splendidly held together until
my arrival deserve all the credit for the victory which we hope
to gain tomorrow."

Even then our victory was won as by a miracle, for while we
brought our vote from California, the anti-Suffragists were also
bringing a senator more quietly from Peoria, 111. Senator Mont-
gomery, who had, moved out of the State and resigned from the
Senate, was persuaded to come back and attempt to regain his
seat. But one of the opposition whom it had happened by chance
Senator Montgomery had told personally of Ms resignation, re-

RATIFICATION 443

fuped to dishonor himself by voting to reseat even a member of
his own Party under these conditions, and the day was saved
again for the women of America.

The last Western State — ^Washington — ratified on
March 22.

Thirty-five States had now accepted the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment. One more and it would become part of the Con-
stitution. However, that last State, every one knew, would
be hard to get. The chances looked brightest in Delaware
and the Woman's Party concentrated all its energies there.

Ratification was brought up twice in Delaware, the first
time on April 1 and the second time on May 5. The fight
was an intensive one, but it failed. This campaign had a
quality of picturesqueness given to it by its tnise en scene —
the open square where the State House stands. Dover Green
is surrounded by charming colonial houses with a beautiful
colonial Capitol dominating them. Here, when the news came
from Philadelphia of the signing of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, a crowd burned the picture of King George —
" Compelled by strong necessity, thus we destroy even the
shadow of that King who refused to reign over a free people."
The ancient whipping-post still stands in a yard adjoin-
ing the State House. A log cabin, which was put up fifty
years ago, is still used as a lawyer's oflSce. The Suffragist
noted the fact that a yoke of oxen, drawing a plow in the
ancient way, had been seen near Dover when the ratification
campaign was going on. This accumulation of historic at-
mosphere added its subtle weight to the regret of the Suf-
fragists when Delaware failed them.

Against highly organized opposition, the Suffragists began
work in Delaware. Florence Bayard Hilles, State Chairman,
conducted this important fight. She had the assistance of
six national organizers: Mary Dubrow, Anita PoUitzer,
Catherine Flanagan, Betty Gram, Vivian Pierce, Elsie Hill ;
of Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, National Ratification Chairman;
of Mabel Vernon, National Secretary of the Woman's Party.
Ultimately Alice Paul joined them. This able group pro-

444. THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

duced a triumph of Suffrage ratification in the Senate on
May 6. The vote was eleven to six. In the usual course
of events, the ratification measure would have gone, after
the Senate passed it, to the House. The votes necessary to
pass it in the House were not forthcoming. The Legislature
adjourned.

The Woman's Party used the interval Until May 17 when
the Legislature reconvened to wage a campaign against their
opponents, by means of petitions, mass-meetings, and appeals
to State leaders. President de Valera, Frank Walsh, and
other champions of Irish freedom used their influence with
the four Irish members of the Lower House. The American
Federation of Labor also helped in this campaign. On
June 2, when it became evident that the Republicans in this
strongly Republican Legislature, would not ratify. President
Wilson asked the Democrats to give their aid. The Presi-
dent's telegram ran:

May I not' as a Democrat express my deep interest in the Suf-
frage Amendment, and my judgment that it will be of the greatest
service to the Party if every Democrat in the Delaware Legisla-
ture should vpte for it.

Delaware had been the first to ratify the Constitution of
the United States but it failed to ratify this second great
instrument of freedom.

For two months the Delaware members of the Republican
Party had delayed the ratification of the Amendment. In
spite of repeated appeals to them, the Republican national
leaders refused to give the necessary support to assure vic-
tory in that State.

On May 18, Will H. Hays, Chairman of the Republican
Party, spoke at the Hotel Willard, Washington, to women
especially selected because of their wealth — in the hope that
they would answer an appeal for funds for the support of
the Republican Party. As each member of the audience took
her seat, she found on her chair a slip which read in effect,

RATIFICATION 445

" For the use of the Republican National Committee, I here-
with enclose a check for $1,000,"

When Mr. Hays arose from his seat, Elsie Hill, well known
as a national organizer of the Woman's Party, arose from
hers. As he started to speak, she said, " Before you ask us
to support the Republican Party, Mr. Hays, won't you tell
us what the Republican Party is going to do about ratifica-
tion in Delaware? "

The Chairman immediately intervened. " I _am sure Mr.
Hays, if he has time in the course oi his remarks, will answer
that." Instantly Sue White, one of the State chairmen,
arose and demanded that the question be answered at once.
Mr. Hays apparently did not hear. He moved to the front
of the platform, opened his lips to speak. Immediately
Benigna Green E!alb, a well-known member of the Woman's
Party, arose and said, " Mr. Hays, women will not give
money for the next elections until they know whether or not
they are going to vote in them. In Delaware, Connecticut,
and Vermont the Republican Party can answer t^iat
question."

Mr. Hays said, " I suppose I may as well take this matter
up at once. My dear ladies, if any one of you know any-
thing whatever about practical politics, you would know that
we do not carry Legislatures around in our pockets. Why
don't you go to Delaware and work for Suffrage.? "

Instantly Anita PoUitzer was on her feet. " I have been
working in Delaware, Mr. Hays, for six months. The legis-
lators of Delaware seem to think that the Republican Party
can do something about Suffrage in that State. Some of the
leading Republicans of the Lower House telephoned to me
last night and asked, 'What are the national Republican
leaders going to do about this dead-lock here?'"

Mr. Hays attempted explanation; apology; prophecy.
" Every Republican hopes that Delaware will ratify. Some
one of the remaining States will be intelligent enough to act
between now and election time. I feel sure women will vote
in the next elections."

446 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Abby Scott Baker interposed, " Mr. Hays, why are you
sure women will vote in the next elections? If the Repub-
lican Party cannot persuade the Republican Legislature of
Delaware to ratify, can it persuade the Republican gover-
nors of Connecticut and Vermont to call special sessions, or
are you depending upon the Democratic States to enfranchise
the women to whom your Party is now appealing for funds ? "

Woman after woman arose and brought up the matter of
Delaware. Mr. Hays' speech was rapidly disappearing be-
fore the onslaught. He had spoken on nothing but Suf-
frage. Many of the audience liked the interruptions no
better than Mr. Hays. They groaned and hissed. But the
Suffragists kept on. Edith Ainge spoke. Elsie HiU arose
for a second time and a third. Finally, definitely enraged,
Mr. Hays accused her of being a Democratic woman who
had come to interrupt his meeting. Miss Hill replied, " My
father was for twenty years Republican Congressman from
Connecticut and for several years ranking member of the
Ways and Means Committee."

Mr. Hays talked for nearly five minutes after this last
interruption. He slid off the subject of Delaware. He pro-
gressed as far away as Abraham Lincoln. Lucy Branham
arose to bring his mind back to Delaware. Mr. Hays was

saying, " The great Republican leaders of the past ^"

and his hands were uplifted to emphasize his statement.
Glancing down between them, his gaze was attracted by Miss
Branham's movement. " Not now, young lady, not now,"
he commanded, or suggested, or perhaps begged. Miss
Branham bore up the aisle. Neither Mr. Hays' gesture nor
sentence completed itself. " In conclusion," he said, " I de-
sire to state that the few women who are about to be

enfranchised could do no better " Mr. Hays' conclusion

merged with air.

In the meantime, the anti-Suffragists in Ohio had brought
a suit attacking the validity of the Ohio ratification on the
ground that the State of Ohio had the initiative and

RATIFICATION 447

referendum on all acts by the State Legislature and there-
fore must have it on ratification, if it were demanded by
petition. They therefore demanded a referendum on the
ratification of SufiFrage. The Woman's Party contested this
suit, engaging the following counsel : Shippen Lewis, George
Wharton Pepper, and William Draper L,ewis. It went
through the Courts of Ohio to the Supreme Court of the
United States, which sustained the validity of the Ohio rati-
fication.

The Republican Convention began on June 8 in Chicago.
Delaware — whose Legislature and Governor were Repub-
lican— ^had just defeated ratification. There were only two
other States from which it seemed possible at this time to
obtain final ratification — ^Vermont and Connecticut. There
were, to be sure, two other States which had not acted on
the Amendment — ^Florida and Tennessee. But there were
clauses in their constitutions which provided that an election
must occur between the submission of an Amendment and its
ratification. The fact that both Vermont and Connecticut
were Republican put the responsibility of finishing up ratifi-
cation on the Republicans. As repeated appeals to the
National Republican leaders had failed to induce them to
bring sufficient pressure on the Republican governors of Ver-
mont and Connecticut, the Suffragists felt that it was neces-
sary to make a stronger protest than hitherto they had
exerted against this Republican inaction. They therefore
decided to picket the Republican National Convention. The
first day of the Convention, Mabel Vernon led a long white-
clad line of women, carrying lettered' banners and the
purple, white, and gold tri-color, from the Woman's Party
Headquarters to the Coliseum, directly opposite, where the
Convention was held. They marched across the street and
took up their brilliant tri-color stand at intervals against
its dull walls.

Mary Ingham bore a banner which said:

THE KEPUBMCAN PABTY HAS THE POWER TO ENFEANCHISB
WOMEN. WHEN WILL IT DO SO?

448 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY
Doris Stevens' banner read:

WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH RESOLUTIONS.
GIVE US THE 36tH STATE.

Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer's banner said:

THEODORE SOOSEVELT ADVOCATED WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

HAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. FORGOTTEN THE

PRINCIPLES OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT.''

Mrs. M. Toscan Bennett's banner said :

WE PROTEST AGAINST THE CONTINUED DISFRANCHISE-
MENT OF WOMEN FOR WHICH THE REPUBLICAN
PARTY IS NOW RESPONSIBLE.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DEFEATED RATIFICATION OF
SUFFRAGE IN DELAWARE.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS BLOCKING SUFFRAGE IN
VERMONT.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS BLOCKING SUFFRAGE IN
CONNECTICUT.

WHEN WILL THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STOP BLOCKING
SUFFRAGE ?

This banner was also carried by Catherine Flanagan and
Lou Daniels.

These banners were held during the first. two days of the
Convention. On the third day, each of thirty women car-
ried a new banner :

VOTE AGAINST THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AS LONG
AS IT BLOCKS SUFFRAGE.

This quotation from Susan B. Anthony also appeared on
the picket line :

NO SELF-RESPECTING WOMAN SHOULD WISH OR WORK FOR THE
SUCCESS OF A PARTY THAT IGNORES HER SEX.

— Susan B. Anthony in 1872 and 1894,

RATIFICATION 449

A favorite banner was :

KEPUBLICANS WE AKE HEB.E.
WHERE IS THE 36tH STATE?

These banners were typical ; many others appeared. '
During the course of the Convention the Republicans in-
serted the following plank in their platform:

We welcome women into full participation in the affairs of
government and the activities of the Republican Party. We
earnestly hope that Republican legislatures in States which have
not yet acted upon the Suffrage Amendment will ratify the
Amendment to the end that all of the women of the nation of
voting age may participate in the election of 1920, which is so
important to the welfare of our country.

On the last day, therefore, a group of pickets hung, from
the balcony in the Convention hall, facing the speakers plat-
form, a banner which was the answer to this ratification
plank. It read:

WHY DOES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BLOCK STTFFRAGE.''

WE DO NOT WANT PLANKS.

WE DEMAND THE 3GtH STATE.

The effect of all this was that instant and urgent pressure
to call special sessions was brought on the Republican gov-
ernors of Vermont and Connecticut by Republican leaders.

In contrast to the treatment which the police of Wash-
ington, Boston, and New York had accorded the pickets, the
police of Chicago were friendly and accommodating. Some-
times they even held the banners for them.

Immediately following the nomination of Senator Hard-
ing, members of the Woman's Party met him in Washington
in an interview arranged by Genevieve Allen. Miss Paul in-
troduced Mrs. Albion Lang, Helena Hill Weed, and Florence
Bayard Hilles, each representing one of the three Repub-
lican States which had not acted favorably on ratification;
Mrs. John Carey, Helen Hoy Greeley, Emma Wold and
Grenevieve Allen, representing women who could vote, and

450 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

Sue White, Mary Ingham, Mrs. John Gordon Battelle, Mrs.
Donald R. Hooker, representing women who could not vote.
The interview was utterly unsatisfactory — Senator Harding
listened and evaded.

Oh June 15, Lousiana, which met in regular session, de-
feated ratification. Here, anticipating a little, it may be
stated that on August 19, North Carolina defeated ratifi-
cation, also in regular session.

In the meantime, the Woman's Party turned its atten-
tion to Tennessee. Up to this time, it had been considered
impossible to ratify there, as there is a clause in the Ten-
nessee State Constitution which says that the Tennessee
Legislature cannot act on any Amendment to the Federal
Constitution unless a new Legislature is elected between the
time when the Federal Amendment shall have passed Con-
gress and its ratification by Tennessee. The decision in the
Ohio case which was handed down at this moment and which
indicated that both Tennessee and Florida could ratify
legally, changed the whole complexion of the Suffrage fight.
The Ohio decision, it will be remembered, was that ratifica-
tion was an act of a Legislature which was not subject to a
referendum to the people. The Woman's Party pointed
out — and they had consulted many eminent lawyers on this
subject — that the clause in the Tennessee Constitution was
equal to requiring a referendum before submitting a con-
stitutional amendment to the Legislature. Since by the Ohio
decision a referendum on such a matter was illegal, that
clause in the Tennessee constitution could not stand in the
way of ratification by the existing Legislature. Sue White,
Tennessee State Chairman, instituted an immediate cam-
paign on Governor ^Roberts, pointing this out to him and
asking him to call a special session. The Woman's Party
concentrated on getting the National Democratic leaders to
bring pressure on Governor Roberts.

In the meantime, leading Democrats had gathered in San
Francisco, preparing for their National Convention. Abby
Scott Baker took charge of the campaign to get the Demo-

RATIFICATION 451

cratic leaders to bring pressure on the Governor of Ten-
nessee. The Democratic National Committee passed a reso-
lution calling on the Governor to convene his session. Homer
S. Cummings, Chairman of the National Democratic Com-
mittee, called him on long-distance telephone and asked this
of him. Many others appealed to him. On June 23, Presi-
dent Wilson telegraphed Governor Roberts as follows :

It would be a real service to the Party and to the Nation if it
is possible for you to, under the peculiar provisions of your State
Constitution, having in mind the recent decision of the Supreme
Court in the Ohio case, to call a special session of the Legislature
of Tennessee to consider the Suffrage Amendment. AUow me to
urge this very earnestly.

The President also sent a letter to acting United States
Attorney General William L. Frierson, asking his opinion on
the constitutionality of ratification by a special session of
the Tennessee Legislature.

Mr. Frierson's reply closed with this sentence :

I am therefore confident that if the Tennessee Legislature is
called in session, it will have the clear power to ratify the
Amendment notwithstanding any provision of the Tennessee
Constitution.

The Democratic National Convention met in San Fran-
cisco on June 28. On the opening day of the Convention,
Governor Roberts announced that he would call the session
on August 9. Among the women who represented the
Woman's Party at the Convention were Abby Scott Baker,
Betty Gram, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. William Kent, Sara
Bard Field, Ida Finney Mackrille, Izetta Jewel Brown. The
Democratic Party inserted a plank in their platform en-
dorsing the Federal Amendment and calling for ratification.

Tennessee then became the center of the Woman's Party
campaign — ^a storm center. It was a foregone conclusion
that a tremendous anti-Suffrage pressure would be brought
on Tennessee, the last State necessary to ratification, as it
had been brought on Delaware when Delaware seemed likely
to be the last State. Alice Paul realized that great national

452 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

political pressure must be brought upon the Tennessee legis-
lators.

Governor Cox, the Democratic nominee, was, of course,
a focus for most of this political pressure. The Woman's
Party determined to make him realize, if possible, that
Tennessee, as a Democratic State, was his responsibility. A
huge deputation of Woman's Party leaders rrom alt over the
country called upon Governor Cox in his office in Columbus
on July 16. Governor Cox said that he would co-operate
with the Woman's Party in this matter and he asked to have
a committee appointed to confer with him in regard to Ten-
nessee. The Democratic National Committee met on July 20.
The Woman's Party lobbied this Committee and got a reso-
lution through urging immediate ratification by Tennessee.
On July 23, Governor Cox conferred with the Committee —
consisting of Sue White, Anita PoUitzer, arid Mrs. James
Rector — ^which he had asked Miss Paul to appoint.

The Republican National Committee met on July 21.
Anita Pollitzer, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, Mrs. James Rector,
and others saw the members of this Committee and secured
from them a resolution urging that the Republicans do all
they could to obtain the last State.

On July 22, the date of Harding's notification that he was
nominated for the Presidency, two hundred members of the
Woman's Party, coming from all over the United States,
dressed in white and carrying purple, white and gold ban-
ners, marched through Marion to Senator Harding's lawn.
The lettered banners, bor^e by two pioneer Suffragists,
Mrs. L. Crozier French and Mrs. E. C. Green, read :

THE BEFUBLICAN FLATFOBM ENDOKSES BATIFICATION OF

SUFFRAGE. ,

THE FIRST TEST OF THE PLATFORM WtLI. COME WHEN THE)

TENNESSEE LEGISLATURE MEETS IN AUGUST.
WILL THE REPUBLICANS CARRY OUT THEIR PLATFORM BY GIVING

A UNANIMOUS REPUBLICAN VOTE IN TENNESSEE FOR

SUFFRAGE ?

RATIFICATION 463

Mrs. John Gordon Battelle, Sue White, Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, addressed Senator Harding and told him that he, as
the Republican leader, had the power to line up the Republi-
can members of the Tennessee Legislature and would be held
responsible for them.

All this time the campaign in Tennessee had been going on.

That campaign, which was to become fiercer and more in-
tensive until it moved like a whirlwind, was conducted in three
ways.

First, Sue White, the State Chairman and other members
of the State organization, assisted by Betty Gram, Catherine
Flanagan and Anita Follitzer, national organizers, con-
ducted the campaign. After the Legislature convened Mrs.
Florence Bayard Hilles, Delaware State Chairman, and Mary
Winsor, pf the Advisory Council, assisted in Nashville.
Mabel Reber and Edith Davis carried on an extensive and
intensive work of publicity.

Second, in Ohio, Abby Scott Baker, co-operating with Mrs.
James Rector, kept in close touch with Cox and Harding,
in order to get them to act upon the specific requests of the
Woman's Party which began to come from Tennessee.

Third, Alice Paul remaining in Washington, planned every
move, and kept in close communication with the political
leaders who could influence Cox and Harding.

Sue White, immediately on her arrival at Nashville,
opened Woman's Party Headquarters and took charge of the
campaign on the legislators.

Anita PoUitzer went to the eastern part of the State and
concentrated on the Republican leaders.

Betty Gram went to the western part of the State and
worked in the Speaker's district.

Catherine Flanagan went into the districts of men soon
to be elected, and secured pledges from some of the nomi-
nees that they would support ratification. In one case.
Miss Flanagan secured the pledge of a Republican candidate
whose Democratic opponent was a strong anti-Suffragist.
A prominent Democrat in the district came out in support

454. THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

of the Republican nominee because he was for ratification.

If the three organizers had not made this intensive sur-
vey of these sections, they would not have realized that
ratification votes were rapidly dropping away. Legislators
gave the excuse that although they voted for Presidential
Suifrage in a previous session, they would not vote for
ratification in this session because they considered it uncon-
stitutional. Alarmed at this defection, which was particu-
larly noticeable among 'the Republican legislators, Anitia Pol-
litzer secured opinions favorable to the constitutionality of
ratification by Tennessee at this special session from the
most eminent legal minds in the State, and sent them to
each member of the Legislature.

Anita PoUitzer also sent a telegram to Abby Scott Baker,
who, it will be remembered, was standing guard over the two
Presidential candidates in Ohio, stating that the situation de-
manded Harding's immediate active support. Mrs. Baker
telegraphed Alice Paul that she had seen Harding in regard
to this matter and that he had telegraphed two Republican
Congressmen to give their support to ratification, and his
friend, ex-Governor Ben Hooper of Tennessee, to send him
a poll of the Republicans. Immediately on receipt of a
telegram from Alice Paul giving this information, Anita
PoUitzer hurried to the " hill-billy " region of the State,
where ex-Governor Hooper lived. Miss PoUitzer went over
the entire situation with him in detail, giving him the only
first-hand information that he bad received. The result was
that he spent the whole day telephoning the doubtful Repub-
lican legislators. He also telegraphed Harding that the
situation was critical and urged him to give aU possible aid to
the Tennessee situation.

Miss PoUitzer then told ex-Governor Hooper that it was
absolutely necessary to have a Republican caucus. Candler,
the Chairman of the Joint Caucus Committee, was an anti-
Suffragist. Congressman J. Will Taylor had, however, a
strong influence with him. Miss PoUitzer started late that
afternoon for KnoxviUe, where Congressman Taylor lived,

RATIFICATION 455

and arriving early in the evening put her case to him. He
said that he had voted for Suffrage in Congress and would
do all he could to help. The next afternoon Miss PoUitzer
saw Congressman Taylor to see what had been accomplished.
He said that he had been unable to get Candler all day,
was leaving the city in an hour. Miss PoUitzer called up the
operator in Athens. She said, " This is a matter of life and
death. Congressman Taylor must speak with Senator Can-
dler. I have been in Athens myself and I know it is such a
tiny place that you have only to look out of the door to know
, where Senator Candler is. You must find him for me." In a
few minutes Senator Candler came to the telephone. Con-
gressman Taylor asked him if he would call a caucus of the
Republicans, and he agreed to do it. That night Miss Pol-
litzer took notices of this to all the papers. A telegram was
sent to every Republican member urging him to come to the
Legislature in time to attend this caucus. It was a neces-
sary step to call this caucus, but it was equally necessary
that all the important Republican leaders of the State be
there. Catherine Flanagan and Anita PoUitzer brought
so much pressure to bear on these leaders— and this in-
cluded getting their reservations and actually seeing them
on the train — ^that they were all there. The Republican
leaders said in effect to the Republican members of the
Legislature who were present, "We want the RepubUcan
members of the Legislature to give a majority of votes to
ratification for the sake of their Party."

Before the Legislature convened, Betty Gram saw the
Speaker of the House, Seth Walker, a very influential per-
son and to the Suffragists, because of his position, probably
the most important member of the Legislature. He told Miss
Gram that he was looking into the question of the consti-
tutionality of ratification at this session, and if he became
convinced of its constitutionality, he might even lead the fight
for ratification. A few days later, just before the Legis-
lature convened, he told Miss White and Miss Gram that he
had decided that it was constitutional for Tennessee to

466 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

ratify and that they might count on his support. On the
opening day of the Legislature, Betty Gram asked Speaker
Walker to go over the poll with her. To her intense astonish-
ment, he told her that he had changed his mind and could
not vote for ratification in this session.

When the Woman's Party forces joined Miss White in
Nashville at the convening of the Legislature, the town had
filled with strangers. The anti-Suffrage forces had poured
into the Capital. Lobbyists for railroads, manufacturing
interests, and corporations of various kinds, came too.

One curious member of this army used to interrogate
legislators as to their views. He said he was a reporter for
a syndicate. Nobody had ever heard of the syndicate he
represented. When Parley Christensen, candidate for Presi-
dent on the Farmer Labor ticket, came to Nashville to help
with ratification among the labor members of the Legislature,
he investigated the record of this gentleman, accused him,
through the Press, of sinister purposes in lobbying. When
this accusation appeared, the man hastily left town.

To off-set all this, the Suffragists of the State, as was
usual in the State campaigns, poured into the Capital.

The atmosphere of Nashville grew rapidly more active . . .
tense . . . hectic.

The Tennessee legislature convened on the ninth of August.
It ratified on the eighteenth of August. The nine days be-
tween were characterized by work more intensive than rati-
fication had yet known.

The Tennessee campaign was a miniature reproduction of
the big national campaign which the Woman's Party had
been waging ever since 1912. Here the Woman's Party
was confronted with a double responsibility. It had to prove
to the Democratic governor, Roberts — and it never relaxed
for an instant in bringing it home to him — ^that he, as leader
of the dominant Party in this Democratic Legislature, was
responsible for ratification and could bring it about. In
addition and at the same time, the Woman's Party had
to make the Republican minority realize that they were

RATIFICATION 457

responsible for votes favorable to ratification from their
men.

In all this work in Tennessee, the Woman's Party was
enormously assisted by the political sagacity of their chair-
man, Sue White, and the fact that all the politicians recog-
nized that political sagacity. The experienced politicians
said that they had never seen a more bitter fight in Tennes-
see. When the Legislature met, the Suffragists had a ma-
jority on paper. But they knew from previous experience
they could not trust this paper majority to remain stable.

The ratification resolution was introduced in the House
and the Senate on the same day, August 10. It was referred
to a committee in both Houses and these committees held a
joint hearing on August 11. This hearing, a notable and
picturesque occasion, took place in the great Assembly
Hall of the Capitol. Both floor and gallery were dotted
with the colors of the opposing forces. The most famous
State authorities on constitutional law appeared in behalf
of the Suffragists.

The Woman's Party had, of course, immediately ascer-
tained who were the members of both Houses who always
supported Governor Roberts' measures. They found that
many of these were not supporting ratification. They went
with a list of these men to Governor Roberts, called his
attention to this significant state of things. They also sent
the news to Abby Scott Baker, who approached Cox daily on
the subject. Cox responded by urging Governor Roberts to
do all in his power to put ratification through.

Sue White gave out daily statements that were models of
succinctness and comprehensiveness, which warned Governor
Roberts that he would be held responsible and warned the
Democratic Party that it would be held responsible, if ratifi-
cation did not go through.

Realizing that they were strongest in the Senate, the
Woman's Party wanted first to bring the matter to a vote
there. They accomplished that on August 13, when ratifica-
tion passed by twenty-five to four. Until this vote was

468 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

cast, the Suffragists themselves did not realize what a degree
of interest — due to their pressure on and from political
leaders — they had developed in Tennessee. The vote proved
a great stimulus to the men of the Lower House, who, up
to this point, had been much more wavering in their atti-
tude towards ratification.

The Capitol in these last few days presented a scene of
activity on the part of the Woman's Party members such
as no ratification campaign had ever known. They were at
the House morning, noon, and night. They had to be there
all the time because the fact that a member was numbered
among their forces in the morning did not at all mean that
he would be among them at night. The enemies of ratifica-
tion made every possible attempt to steal Suffrage adherents.
Realizing at last that they could not deflect men who were im-
movable on the ratification side, they began to introduce mea-
sures the passage of which would have been tantamount to de-
feat. For instance, a resolution was suddenly brought up one
morning providing that the question of ratification should
be referred to mass-meetings of the people to be held in
every district on August 21. This would have meant a
fatal postponement of ratification. Many of the legislators
would have liked to hide behind a measure of this sort, but
realizing this, the Woman's Party members told them that
they would consider such a vote hostile to Suffrage and
would hold them responsible. The Suffragists obtained suf-
ficient support against the measure to get it tabled.

When it came to the last few days, the Woman's Party
members seemed to work twenty-four hours out of the twenty-
four, and some think they worked twenty-five. The situa-
tion was complicated, as always at the last hour, by rumors.
Reports started and gained force every day that men were
being bribed; so that legislators, about to declare for Suf-
frage, were often held up by the feeling that that act might
lay them open to suspicion. This brought about a condi-
tion of such uncertainty that neither side. Suffragist nor
anti-Suffragist, could prophesy the outcome. The instant

RATIFICATION 459

a man wavered, the Woman's Party members, who, before
the Legislature convened, had been working in the legisla-
tive districts, immediately got in touch with the political
leaders who controlled the situation in those districts. Not-
withstanding that nothing seemed stable at this period, the
Woman's Party members met every few hours and com-
pared pollsi These polls served a second purpose. They
gave political leaders definite data as to the position of
every man in the Legislature. In all this confusion, the
Woman's Party always knew where it stood.

On the morning of the vote the Suffrage workers founded
up all their legislative forces and saw that they arrived safely
at the Capitol. More rumors were afloat that legislators
would change their vote at the last moment. In every case,
the Woman's Party saw these men again and made them
realize that they were committed, not only to them, but to
their political leaders.'

Just before the vote was taken, Seth Walker ruled all the
women off the floor of the House.

Two dramatic incidents marked the close of the cam-
paign. The hero of one of these episodes was Banks Turner,
of the other Harry Burn. To the very end the Woman's
Party was uncertain of both their votes.

Banks Turner was one of Governor Roberts' closest
friends. In considering the case of Banks Turner, it must
always be held in mind that the Woman's Party steadfastly
kept the Democrats to their pledges through Cox's constant
pressure on Governor Roberts. It had at last penetrated
Roberts' psychology that if he permitted ratification to
fail in Tennessee, the Democrats would be held responsible
by the women in the coming elections. The Woman's Party
saw Governor Roberts before the vote and reminded him of
this. The Woman's Party also saw Cox before the vote and
reminded him of this ; also reminded him to remind Roberts.
When the vote was actually imminent, the Roberts forces
began to get alarmed ; for they realized they had played with
the issue too long. As has been said Banks Turner was one

460 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

of the Governor's closest friends. Banks Turner had never
actually said he was against ratification, but he had never
said he was for it. No Suffragist counted on him.

As for Harry Burn

When Anita PoUitzer had been working among Republi-
can leaders, she had gone to Harry Bum's Republican
county chairman to ask him if they could count on Harry
Burn's support for ratification. In her presence, he tele-
phoned to Harry Burn and assured Miss PoUitzer that the
Suffragists could depend on him. When Mr. Burn appeared
in the Legislature, he was approached by Suffragist? and
anti-Suffragists in close and quick succession. After a while,
he announced that he was uncertain. The fact that he was
the youngest member of the Legislature — scarcely more
than a lad indeed — and that he was immensely popular and
beloved — seemed to add an especial acuteness to the situa-
tion. To Suffragists who approached him a few days before
the vote, he said, " I cannot pledge myself, but I will do noth-
ing to hurt you."

Of course that could be translated that he would not vote
yes, but would not vote no — ^not vote at all in short.

With the poll virtually a tie, the Suffragists could take
no chances. Miss PoUitzer telephoned at once to the county
chairman who had assured her of Harry Burn's vote and
told him the situation. The next day Betty Gram saw a
letter, written to Harry Burn by one of the foremost political
leaders of the State, which practically urged him — ^for his
own political good — ^to vote no. Members of the Woman's
Party saw Harry Burn and told him that they knew pressure
was being brought upon him from State leaders against rati-
fication. He would make no statement of support but he
urged them to trust him and begged the Suffragists not to
tell the political leaders of the State that they knew these
political leaders had broken faith and were persuading him
not to vote for ratification. He was obviously much wrought
up over the situation.

The date of the vote came and on the Suffrage poll, Harry

RATIFICATION 461

Burn was still marked doubtful. When he appeared in the
corridors of the House, however, he wore the red rose of the
anti-Suffragists. One of the Woman's Party organizers
said to him just before the vote was taken, " We really
trusted you, Mr. Burn, when you said that you would never
hurt us." He said, " I mean that — my vote will never hurt
you."

Still he continued to wear the red rose of the anti-Suffra-
gists . . .

It was known to many that Harry. Burn had recently
received a letter from his mother asking him to support rati-
fication. It was known only to the Woman's Party how
much political pressure to support it had been brought upon
him.

The supreme moment arrived. Ninety-six members were
present oiit of a total membership of ninety-nine. The first
test of strength came in a motion to table the Resolution.
Harry Burn's name was called early in the roll. True to
the promise of that red rose, he voted yes. The roll-call
went on, the members answering exactly according to ex-
pectation. What would Banks Turner do ? If he voted with
the Suffragists, the result would be a tie, forty-eight to
forty-eight ; the motion would not be tabled. His name was
called; he did not answer. The vote was now inevitably
forty-eight to forty-seven for the motion to table. jAU
seemed lost. But before the final announcement of the vote.
Turner arose and after a moment's hesitation said :

" I wish to be recorded as against the motion to table."

The Resolution was still before the House, but this test
vote showed a tie — one short of a majority.

Then came the final vote.

Now the stillness was like death. Unless Turner stayed
with tiie Suffragists and, in addition, another vote was
gained, the Amendment was lost. When Harry Burn's name
was called, he answered in a clear, loud voice, " Yes." The
death-like stillness settled again over the audience in the

462 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

galleries as the roll-call approached the name of Banks
Turner. He had voted against tabling; that did not make it
certain that he would vote for the Resolution.

" Banks Turner ! " called the clerk.

" Yes," he answered in a solemn, low voice.

The Resolution had carried — forty-nine to forty-seven.

Instantly Speaker Walker, white-faced, was on his feet.
" I change my vote from ' No ' to ' Yes,' " he said. Of course
he made this lightning change in order that he might move to
reconsider the Resolution. But he missed one point. The
vote now stood fifty to forty-six. His vote had given the
Resolution a constitutional majority, that is a majority, not
only of the membership present of the Lower House but of
the entire Lower House. Unwittingly, Speaker Walker
killed one legal attack already prepared by the anti-Suf-
fragists in case the measure should pass.

An uproar of enthusiasm greeted the vote. State
leaders who had assisted the Suffrage campaign, yelled,
clapped, stamped. Women alternately laughed and wept;
cheered and applauded'. " One legislator producing a bell
from somewhere, rang it steadily. As for the Suffra-
gists themselves, naturally they went wild with joy; par-
ticularly the Tennessee women, who were triumphant that
their State had proved to be the needed thirty-sixth to give
the franchise to women.

Of course, the anti-Suffragist red roses were in great
evidence all during the voting. But after the vote was
taken, they seemed to fade into the background. The
yellow jonquils of the Suffragists, the great purple, white,
and gold banners of tlje Woman's Party made tiny flares
and big slashes of light and color everywhere.

The bizarre and sensational moves of the opposition — the

, withdrawal of the anti-Suffragist members of the Tennessee

Assembly to Alabama until the Suffrage members got tired

and went home, the return of the anti-Suffragist members,

their assembly in a Rump Legislature, their " reconsidered "

RATIFICATION 463

vote against the Amendment — all that seemed important at
the time. Now it has faded to insignificance. The anti-Suf-
fragists, on this and other grounds, instituted a suit against
the validity of the Tennessee ratification. That suit and six
attacks, also directed against the validity of ratification, are
still pending.

In the meantime, however, Connecticut has ratified.

In brief, the facts in regard to Connecticut are these:
Governor Marcus Holcomb, one of the foremost anti-
Suffragists in the country, called a session of the Connect-
icut legislature to provide the legal machinery to enable
the women of Connecticut to vote in the coming elections.
The call was issued for September 14. The Suffragists
instantly took advantage of this special session to insti-
tute a campaign for ratification.

In addressing the legislators, Governor Bolcomb said
in effect : " Do not ratify this session. It will be illegal,
as ratification was not mentioned in my call. I will call
you again for that purpose a week from today."

Nevertheless Connecticut ratified on September 14.

Catherine Flanagan of the Woman's Party personally
brought the ratification from the Secretary of State of
Connecticut to the State Department in Washington. (^

A week later, to avoid any question as to the legality
of the first ratification, which had been attacked on the
ground that the subject was not included in the gover-
nor's message, Connecticut ratified again.

The women of the United States voted in the Presiden'
tial election of 1920.

XVII
THE LAST DAYS

TO A COMRADE

Oh, ypu of the unquenchable spirit — ^

How I adore you!

I could light forever the waning fires of my courage
At the incessant, upleaping flame of your being!

You, — creature of light and color and vivid emotions —

Of radiant action, — who ever could dream of you passive.

Submissive, your small self stilled into lazy contentment?

You, fired with the beauty of ardor.

Lovely with love for all that is clean and earnest and forceful.

Yourself daring anything

So long as it be for Womanhood, and the cause of justice and

progress —
Daring to lead and daring to follow —
Giving us each of your unfailing inspiration.

You, over whom the jeers and the mockings and the ugly thoughts

of those who understand not
Pass lightly, like a spent breath of foul air in a still cavern,
Unfiicking the steadfast torch of you —
I could re-light forever the waning fires of my courage
At the incessant, upleaping flame of your being!

Elizabeth Kalb,
The Sufragist, January 25, 1919.

In 1917 occurred the great leap forward in the activity
of fhe Woman's Party; in swift succession came the pick-
eting; the burning of the President's words; the Watch-
fires of Freedom. And Headquarters from 1917 on — as
can be easily imagined — ^was a feverishly busy place.
From the instant the picketing started, it grew electric with
action. As for the work involved in making up the con-
stant accession of picket line^

464

THE LAST DAYS 465

It was not easy at an instant's notice to find women who
had the time to picket. But always there were some
women willing to picket part of the time and some willing
to picket all of the time. Mary Gertrude Fendall was in
charge of this work. That her office was no sinecure is
evident from the fact that on one occasion alone — that
memorahle demonstration of March 4, 1917 — she pro-
vided a line of nearly a thousand. Of course, too, as fast
as the women went to jail, other women had to be found to
fill their places. In those days Miss Fendall lived at the
telephone and between telephone calls, she wrote letters
which invited sympathizers to come from distant States to
join the banner-bearing forces. Those women who could
always be depended on for picketing were, in the main.
Party sympathizers living in Washingibon; Party work-
ers permanently established at Headquarters; organizers
come back suddenly from their regular work. But volun-
teers came too — volunteers from the District of Colum-
bia and from all parts of the United States. In the winter,
as has been before stated, picketing was a cold business. The
women found that they had to wear a surprising amount of
clothes — sweaters and coats, great-coats, mufflers, arctics
and big wooUy gloves. Many of the pickets left these ex-
tra things at Heaqpiarters and the scramble to disengage
rights and lefts of the gloves and arctics was one of the
amusing details of the operation of the picket line. Ban-
ners took up space too ; but they added their cheering color
to the picture.

When the arrests began, the atmosphere grew more
tense and even more busy. But just as — when trouble
came — a golden flood poured into the Woman's Party trea-
sury, so volunteer pickets came in a steadily lengthening
line. Anne Martin had said to the Judge who sentenced
her„' "Salong as you send women to jail for asking for
freedom, just so long will there be women willing to go to
jail for such a cause." This proved to be true. Volun-
teers for this gruelling experience continued to appear

466 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

from all over the country. Mrs. Grey of Colorado, send-
ing her twenty-two year old daughter, Nathalie, into the
battle, said:

I have no son to fight for democracy abroad, and so I send
my daughter to fight for democracy at home.

It interested many of the Woman's Party members to
study the first reactions of the police to the strange situa-
tion the picketing brought about. Most of the policemen
did not enjoy maltreating the girls. Some of them were
stupid and a few of them were brutal, but many of them
were kind. They always deferred to Lucy Burns with an
air of profound respect — Miss Lucy, they called her. But
a curious social element entered into the situation. Large
numbers of the women were well-known Washingtonians.
The police were accustomed to seeing them going about the
city in the full aura of respected citizenship. It was very
difficult often, to know — in arresting them — what social
tone to adopt.

Mrs. Gilson Gardner tells an amusing story of her first
arrest. In the midst of her picketing, an officer suddenly
stepped up to her. He said politely : " It is a very beau-
tiful day." She concurred. They chatted. He was in
the meantime looking this way and that up the Avenue.
Suddenly, still very politely, he said : " I think the patrol
will be along presently." Not until then did it dawn on
Mrs. Gardner that she was arrested.

Later, when the Watchfires were going, Mrs, Gardner
was again arrested while she was putting wood on the
flames. There was a log in her arms : " Just a minute,
officer," she said, in her gentle, compelling voice, and the
officer actually waited while she crossed the pavement and
put the remaining log on the fire. Later, when Mrs.
Gardner's name was called in the court, she decided that
she preferred to stand, rather than sit in the chair desig-
nated for the accused. The policeman started to force
her down. Again she said, in the gentle, compelling tone:

THE LAST DAYS 467

" Please do not touch me, officer ! " and he kept his hands
off her from that time forth.

Of course, the unthinking made the usual accusation
that these women were doing all this for notoriety. That
was a ridiculous statement, whose disproof was easy. The
character and quality of the women themselves were its
best denial. The women who composed the Woman's
Party were of all kinds and descriptions; they emerged
from all ranks and classes; they came from all over the
United States. The Party did not belong exclusively to
women of great wealth and social position, although there
were many such in its list of membership; and some of
these belonged to families whose fortunes were internation-
ally famous. It did not belong exclusively to working
women, although there were thousands of them in its
ranks; and these represented almost every wage-e&rning
task at which women toil. It did not belong exclusively
to women of the arts or the professions; although scores
of women, many nationally famous and some internation-
ally famous, lent their gifts to the furtherance of the
work. It did not belong exclusively to the women of the
home, although scores of wives left homes, filled with the
beauty which many generations of cultivation had accum-
ulated— left these homes and left children; and although
equal numbers left homes of a contrasting simplicity and
humbleness — ^left these homes and left children to go to
jail in the interests of the movement. It may be said, per-
haps, that the rank and file were characterized by an influ-
ential solidity, that they were women, universally respected
in their communities, necessary to it. It was an all-
woman movement. Indeed, often women who on every
other possible opinion were as far apart as the two poles,
worked together for the furtherance of the Federal
Amendment. On one occasion, for instance, on the picket
line, two women who could not possibly have found a sin-
gle intellectual congeniality except the enfranchisement of
women stood side by side. One was nationally and inter-

468 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

nationally famous as a conservative of great fortune. The
other was nationally and internationally famous as a radi-
cal. In other words, one stood at the extreme right of
conservatism and the other at the extreme left of radical-
ism. It was as though, among an archipelago of differ-
ing intellectual interests and social convictions, the Party
members had found one little island on which they could
stand in an absolute unanimity; stand ready to fight — ^to
the death, if it were necessary — ^for that conviction.

Some of the stories which they tell at Headquarters to
illustrate the Pan-woman quality of the Party are touch-
ingly beautiful. There is the case, for instance, of a woman
government clerk, self-supporting, a widow, and the
mother of a little girl. Every day for weeks, she had
passed that line of pickets standing silently at the White
House gates. She heard the insults that were tossed to
the women. She saw the brutalities which were inflicted
on them. She witnessed arrests. Something rose within
fluttered . . . tore at her. . , . One day when Alice
Paul was picketing, this young woman, suit-case in
hand, appeared before her. She said " I am all ready to
picket if you need me. I have made all the necessary ar-
rangements in case I am arrested. Where shall I go to
join your forces so that I may picket today? " She was
arrested that afternoon and sent to prison.

Two other government clerks, who appeared on the
picket line, were arrested and jailed. They appealed to
the government authorities for a month's leave of absence
on the score of their imprisonment. All these three
women, of course, ran the risk of losing their positions.
But in their case the instinct to serve their generation
was stronger than the instinct to conserve any material
safety. It is pleasant to record that they were not com-
pelled to make this sacrifice. Others, however, suffered.
A school teacher in the Woman's Party, for instance, lost
her position because of her picketing.

If the foregoing is not denial enough of the charge, com-

THE LAST DAYS 469

mon when the picketing began, that these women were no-
toriety-seeking fanatics, perhaps nothing will bring con-
viction. It scarcely seems however that the most obsti-
nate antagonist of the Woman's Party would like to be-
lieve that delicately reared women could enjoy, even for
the sake of notoriety — aside from the psychological effect
of spiders and cockroaches everywhere, worms in their
food, vermin in their beds, rats in their cells — the brutali-
ties to which they were submitted. Yet many women who
/had endured this once, came back to endure it again and
again.

One of the strong points of the Woman's Party was its
fairness. In reference to the President, for instance,
Maud Younger used to say that the attitude of the
Woman's Party to him was like that of a girl who wants a
college education. She teases her father for it without
cessation, but she goes on loving him just the same.
Another strong point of the Woman's Party was its sense
of humor on itself. They tell with great delight the amus-
ing events of this period — of the grinning street gamin
who stood and read aloud one of the banners, How long
must women wait for liberty? and then yelled : " T'ree
months yous'U be waitin' — in Occoquan." — of a reporter
who, coming into Headquarters in search of an interview,
found a child sliding down the bannisters. Before he
could speak, the child announced in a tone of proud tri-
umph : " My mother's going to prison."

A story they particularly like is of that young couple
who, having had no bridal trip at the time of their marriage,
came to Washington for a belated honeymoon. They vis-
ited Headquarters together. The bride became so inter-
ested in the picketing that she went out with one of the
picket-lines and was arrested. She spent her belated
honeymoon in jail, and the groom spent his belated honey-
moon indignantly lobbying the Congressmen of his own
district.

Later, when they were lighting the Watchfires of Free-

470 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

dom on the White House pavement, the activity at Head-
quarters was increased one hundred-fold.

The pickets themselves refer to that period as the most
" messy and mussy " in their history. Everything and
everybody smelled of kerosene. All the time, there was
one room in which logs were kept soaking in this pervasive
fluid. When they first started the Watchfires they carried
the urn and the oil-soaked logs openly, to the appointed spot
on the pavement in front of the White House. Later,
when the arrests began and the fires had to be built so
swiftly that they had to abandon the urn, they carried
these logs under coats or capes. The White House pave-
ment was always littered with charred wood even when the
Watchfires were not going. Once the fires were started it
was almost impossible to put them out. Kerosene-soaked
wood is a very obstinate substance. Water had no effect
on it. Chemicals alone extinguished it. Amazed crowds
used to stand watching these magic flames. Often when
the policemen tried to stamp the fires out, they succeeded
only in scattering them.

It was an extraordinary effect, too, when the policemen
were busy putting out one fire, to see others start up, in
this corner of the Park, in that corner, in the great bronze
urn, near the center.

Building a fire in that bronze urn was as difficult a mat-
ter as it seems. A Woman's Party member, glancing out
from a stairway window at the top of the house at Head-
quarters, had noted how boldly the urn stood out from the
rest of the Park decoration. . . .

At three o'clock one morning, Julia Emory and Hazel
Hunkins, two of the youngest and tiniest pickets, bore over
to the Park from Headquarters several baskets of wood
which they concealed in the shadows under the trees. The
next problem was to get a ladder there without being
seen. They accomplished this in some way, dragging it
over the ground, slow foot after slow foot, and placed it
against the urn. At intervals the policeman on the beat,

Every Good Suffragist the Morning After Ratification.
Nina Allender in The Suffragist.

THE LAST DAYS 471

who was making the entire round — or square — o#» the
Park, passed. While one girl mounted the rudder and
filled the urn with oil-soaked paper, oil-soaked wood, and
liberal libations of oil, the other remained on guard.
When the guard gave the word that the policeman was
near, the two girls threw themselves face downward on the
frozen grass. It is a very large urn and by this stealthy
process it took hours to fill it. It was two days before
they started the fire. Anybody might have seen the logs
protruding from the top of the urn during those two days,
but nobody did.

The day on which the urn projected itself into
the history of the Woman's Party, the Watchfires
were burning for the first time on the White House pave-
ments. The street and the Park were filled with people.
A member of the Woman's Party, passing the urn, fur-
tively threw into it a lighted asbestos coil. The urn in-
stantly belched flames which threatened to lick the sky.
The police arrested every Woman's Party member in sight.
All the way down the street as the patrol carried them
away. Hazel Hutchins and Julia Emory saw the flames flaring
higher and higher.

"How did they do that.''" one man was heard to say.
" I've been here the whole afternoon and I didn't see them
light it."

Twice afterwards fires were started in the urn. For
that matter, fires were started there after the police had
set a watch on it.

Hazel Hunkins, young, small, slender, took the urn un-
der her special patronage. One of the pictures the
Woman's Party likes to draw is the time Hazel was ar-
rested there. She had climbed up onto the pedestal and
was throwing logs into the pool of oil when two huge
policemen descended upon her. The first seized one foot
and the second seized the other ; and they both pulled hard.
Of course in these circumstances, it was impossible for her
to move. But she is an athlete and she clung tight to the

4.72 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

urn iSdge. Still the policemen pulled. Finally she said
gently, " If you will let go of my feet, I will come down
myself."

Later asbestos coils were introduced into the campaign.
This — from the police point of view — ^was more annoying
than the kerosene-soaked logs; for they were compact to
carry, easy to handle, difficult to put out, and they lasted
a long, long time.

Another picture the Woman's Party likes to draw is of
Mildred Morris starting asbestos coils. With her nimbus
of flaming hair, Miss Morris seemed a flame herself. She
was here, there, everywhere. The police could no more
catch up with her than they could with a squirrel. One
night, with the assistance of two others, she — unbeliev-
ably— ^fastened some asbestos coils among the White
House trees; but to her everlasting regret the guardls
found them before the illumination could begin. '

The stories they tell about arrests at this time are end-
less. Little Julia Emory, who was arrested thirty-four
times, is a repository of lore on this subject.

They were a great trial to the police — the arrests of
these later months. While under detention, the pickets
used to organize impromptu entertainments. This was
during the period, when at their trials, the Suffragistk
would answer no questions and the court authorities werb
put to it to establish their identities. They related with
great glee how in his efforts to prove Annie ArnielHs
identity, a policeman described one of their concerts in
court.

And then, your Honor, that one there said, " We'll now have
a comb solo from a distinguished combist, who has played before
all the crowned heads of Europe, Annie Arniel," and then, your
Honor, the defendant got up and played a tune on a comb.

When, for instance. Suffragists refused bail, the police
did not like to hold them overnight because it was such an
expense to the District of Columbia to feed them. Julia

THE LAST DAYS 473

Emorj describes one evening when a roomful of them,
arrested, and having refused to put up bail, were wait-
ing the will of the powers. During this wait, which lasted
several hours, they entertained themselves by singing.

Once a policeman came in :

" Will you pay your bail if we put it at twenty-five dol-
lars?"

" No," answered the pickets promptly.

He went out, but later he returned.

" Will you pay your bail if we put it at five dollars? "

" No."

" Then march out."

But those light moments were only foam thrown up from
serious and sometimes desperate times. When a crowd of
ex-pickets gather together and indulge in reminiscences, ex-
traordinary revelations occur. Looking at their faces and
estimating their youth, one wonders at a world which per-
mitted one per cent of these things to happen.

And as for their experiences with the mobs. . . . Not
the least of the psychological factors in the situation was
the slow growth of the crowds; the circle of little boys who
gathered about them first, spitting at them, calling them
names, making personal comments; then the gathering
gangs of young hoodlums who encouraged the boys to fur-
ther insults; then more and more crowds; more and more
insults; the final struggle.

Often of course the pickets stood against the White
House fence, an enormous mob packed in front of them,
with the knowledge that police protection — according to
the orders of the day — ^might be given them or might not.
. . . Sometimes that crowd would edge nearer and nearer
until there was but a foot of smothering, terror-fraught
space between them and the pictets. Literally those
women felt they had their backs to the wall. Occasion-
ally they had to mount the stone coping! Always too they
feared that any sudden movement within the packed,
slowly approaching hostile crowd might foam into vio-

474 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

lence. Occasionally, when the police followed orders to
protect the pickets, violent things happened to people in
the crowd. Catherine Flanagan saw a plain-clothes man
hit six sailors over the head in succession with a billy. TTiey
went down like nine pins. Yet when after hours of a
seemingly impressive waiting the actual struggle came —
something — some spiritual courage bigger than themselves
— impelled them to hold on to their banner poles to the last
gasp. They were big in circumference — ^those banner
poles — ^but the girls clutched them so tightly that often it
took three policemen to wrench them away. Catherine
Flanagan had deep gashes on the inside of her palms where
her own nails had penetrated her flesh and great wounds
on the outside of her hands T^here the policemen had dug
their n^ils into them. Virginia Arnold's hands and arms
were torn as though in a struggle with some wild beast.

Yet, I repeat, Headquarters saw its lighter moments
even in those most troubled times. And during those
most troubled times, that gay spirit of youth managed to
maintain itself. The onlookers marveled at it. But it
was only because it was a spiritual quality — ^youth of the
soul, in addition to youth of the body — that it could en-
dure. During the course of the eight years of its history,
the members of the Woman's Party had been subjected to
disillusion after disillusion. The older ones among them
bore this succession of shocks with that philosophy which
a long experience in public affairs engenders. But the
younger ones — ^believing at first, as youth always believes,
in the eternal verities, and in their eternal prevalence —
witnessed faith-shaking sights and underwent even more
faith-shaking experiences.

In their contact with public men, they saw such a man
as Borah for instance — perhaps the chief of the Knights
of the Double Cross — give the Woman's Party what virtu-
ally amounted to his pledged word to support the Amend-
ment and then coolly repudiate it. They saw Moses of
New Hampshire play a quibbling trick on them which in-

THE LAST DAYS 476

volved them in weeks of the hardest kind of work only
calmly to ignore his own pledge at the end. They con-
tended with such differing personalities as the cold, cul-
tured mind, immutably set in the conventions of a past
generation, of Henry Cabot Lodge; the unfairness, or
fatuity, or brutality of such men as Penrose of Pennsyl-
vania, Thomas of Colorado, Wadsworth of New York,
Reed of Missouri, Brandegee of Connecticut, Hoke Smith
of Georgia.

When the picketing began, they saw outside forces get
their Headquarters from them; saw them influence scores
of property owners sometimes after an advance rent had
been paid, not to let houses to them; saw them try to influ-
ence the people who gave money, to withhold such financial
support; saw them try to influence the newspapers to be
less impartial in their descriptions of Woman's Party
activities. As the picketing went on and the burning of
the President's words and the Watchfires succeeded it —
while they were exercising their inalienable right of peace-
ful protest — they knew the experience of being harried by
mobs at the very door of the President of the United
States ; harried while the President passed in his carriage
through their midst; later to be harried in collaboration
by both mobs and police. Under arrest and in prison,
they underwent experiences which no one of them would
have believed possible of the greatest republic in the world.
They were held incommunicado; they could see neither
counsel nor Party members. They were offered food filled
with worms. They were submitted to incredible brutali-
ties.

And yet, I have said that spirit of youth prevailed. It
prevailed because they were speaking for their generation.
They developed a sense of devotion to their ideal of free-
dom which would have stopped short of no personal sacri-
fice not death itself. They developed a sense of comrade-
ship for each other which was half love, half admiration
and aU reverence. In summing up a fellow worker, they

476 THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY

speak first of her " spirit," and her " spirit " is always
heautifvl, or noble, or glorious, or some such youth-loved
word.

Once, when one party of pickets, about to leave Occo-
quan, was in the dining-room, a fresh group, just sen-
tenced, were brought into luncheon and placed at another
table. Conversation was not permitted. Not a word was
spoken, but with one accord the released pickets raised
their water-glasses high, then lowered them and drank to
their comrades.

Yes, that was their strengths — ^spirit of youth. La-
vinia Dock said, " The young are at the gates." The
young stormed those gates and finally forced them open.
They entered. And leaving behind all sinister remem-
brance of the battle, they turned their faces towards the
morning.

THE END

INDEX

Abbot, Minnie D., 225

Adams, Abigail, 103

Adams, Hazel, 367

Adams, Pauline, 236, 238, 404, 407

Adams, Mrs. Walter, 402

Addams, Jane, 13, 39, 42

Adler, Jessie, 389

Ainge, Edith, 238. 357, 373, 374,

Bar Association, 295, 297
Barnes, Mrs. Charles W., 251
Barnett, John T., 89
Barrett, Naomi, 396, 397
Barrow, Frank, 432, 438, 440
Barry, John D., 255
Bartelme, Judge Mary A., 157
Bartlett, Dorothy, 238

375, 377, 392, 393, 396, 400, 404, Battelle, Mrs. John Gordon, 450,

407, 446 453

Allen, Genevieve, 429, 449 Beach, Cornelia, 238

AUender. Nina...i£L-lS. 19. 46, 208 Beale, Olive, 377, 379

American "Federation of TiaEoiri Beard, Mary, 13, 43, 51, 145, 155,

166
Amidon, Beulah, 47, 124, 193, 203,

232, 342
Andrews, Harriet U., 377, 393,

394, quoted 406
Anglin, Margaret, 107
Aniba, Isabel C, quoted 346
Arizona ratifies, 423
Arkansas ratifies, 439
Armes, Mrs. George A., 63, quoted

92
Arniel, Annie, 220, 221, 238, 357,

377, 392, 393, 394, 400, 401, 404,

472
Arnold, Bertha, 332, 363, 372, 375,

377, 379, 381, 400, 407
Arnold, Virginia, 71, 77, 124, 220,

221, 230, 233, 374, 375, 376, 377,

474
Ascough, Lillian M., 357, 404
Ascough, Mrs. W. D., 151, 407
Ashurst, Senator, 54
Asquith, Heriert, 10
Atwater, Mrs. George, 374
Austin, Mary, 114

Baird, Senator Davis, 381, 415,

436
Baker, Abby Scott, quoted 152

300, 381
Beckwith, Mrs. Carol, 145
Beim, Mrs. A. N., 251
Belmont, Mrs. O. H. P., 51, 73,

quoted 105; 1<)6, 113, 129, 201,

290, 311
Bennett, Mrs. M. Toscan, quoted

387; 395, 448
Bergen, Mrs. William, 251
Black, Judge W. W., 88
Black, Louise M., 357
Blair, Henry W., 215
Blatch, Harriot Stanton, 13, 96,

151, 153, 167, 174, 195
Bloch, Senator, 441, 442
Blumberg, Hilda, 243, 252
Bodenheim, Marie, 413
Boeckel, Florence Brewer, 46, 47,

186
Boeckh, Kate J., 236, 357, 400
Boissevain, Inez MilhoIIand, 21,

25, 96, 158, 174, memorial

service, 185-7
Borah, Senator, 344, 350, 382
Bovee, Mrs. Virginia, 267, quoted

268
Boyle, Catherine, 346, 396
Brady, Senator, 84
Brandeis, Miss, 81
m' 20Y~238,'291,' 301, 31«, 328, Branham, Lucy, 124, 238, 328, 334,
334' 3f0, 344, 381, 407, 428, 429, 351, quoted 364; 381, 385, 400,

446! 450, 451, 453, 454, 457 407, 446

Baker, Secretary of War, 160, 441 Branham, Mrs. L. V. G. Gwynne,
Banbe'rger, Governor, 428 404

477

478

INDEX

Brannan, Mrs. John Winters, 129,
190, 201, 226, 250, 251, quoted
252; 274, 279, 282, 388

Brannenberg, Jennie, 404

Brisbane, Arthur, 158

Bristow, Senator, 56

Bristow-Mondell Amendment, 36,
77

British Mission, 207

Bronson, Minnie, quoted 256, 341

Brooke, Minnie E., 66, 176

Brown, Izetta Jewel, 451

Brown, Miss, 11

Brown, Mrs. William Gay, 440

Brown, Rev. Olympia, 204, 313,
quoted 388

Brownlow, Commissioner, 267

Bruere, Mrs. Henry, 145

Bryan, J. W., 93

Bryant, Louise, 404

Burn, Harry, 459, 460, 461

Burns, Lucy, 9, 13, 16-7, 42, 46,
51, quoted 62, 68; 69-70, 74, 77,
129, 148, 151, 181, 201, 208, 210,
220, quoted 223, 230, 233, 238,
251, 264, quoted 267-8; 274, 279,
quoted 281; 301, 318, 357, 360,
377, 381, 396, 400, 404, 407, 466

Burritt, M. Tilden, 251

Butterworth, Mrs. Henry, 251, 275

Calderhead, Iris, 124, 222, 380

California ratifies, 429

Calmes, Lucia, 396

Calnan, Eleanor, 238, 377, 409

Campbell, Agnes, 151

Campbell, Mary, 346

Candler, Senator, 454

Capper, Governor, 147, 441

Caraway, Representative, 137

Carey, Governor, 431, 432

Carey, Mrs. John, 449

Carlin, Representative, 133, 137

Carpenter, Alice, 155, 300

Casey, Josephine, 77

Gastleton, Beatrice, 412, 413

Catt, Mrs. Carrie Chapman, 162,

348
Catts, Governor, 331-2
Ghamberlain-Mondell Amendment,

36
Chamberlain, Senator, 35
Chandler, Representative, 137
Chase, Agnes, 357
Chevrier, Palys L., 396, 404

Cheyenne Tribwie, quoted 88

Chi, Mrs. Chem., 101

Chicago Republican Convention,

447-9
Chisaski, Helen, 396
Chisholm, Mrs. W. W., 238
Christensen, Parley, 456
Churchill, Winston, 10
Clark, Champ, 338
Clark, Maude F., 70
Clarke, Pauline, 46, 124, 220, 357
Club Women's Deputation, 60
Cochran, William J., 416
Cohen, Cynthia, 251
Coles, Assemblyman, 437
College Equal Suffrage League, 34
Collins, Josephine, 409, 410
Colorado ratifies, 431
Colt, Mrs. William L., 181, 252
Colt, Senator, 343
Colvin, Sarah T. (Mrs. A. R.), 151,

400, 402, 404, 407
Comborrow, Reba, 404
Condon, Miss, 295
Congressional Committee, 3, 31-2,

33, 35, 39, 45-6
Congressional Union, 37, 47-8, 49,

55, quoted 88-93, 101-7, 123, 129,

131-2, 156, 157
Connecticut ratifies, 463
Connelly, Betty, 409, 410
Constable, Anna, 151
Cosu, Alice, 251, 273
Cox, Governor, 452, 457
Crabtree, Hon. W. R., 299
Crans, Lillian, 209
Crawford, Cora, 357, 401
Crewe, Lord, 10, 11
Crocker, Gertrude Lynde, 128, 201,

248, 357, 393,' 396
Crocker, Ruth, 128, 233, 242, 400
Crone, Berta, 220, 293
Culberson, Senator, 343
Cummings, Homer S., 416, 451
Cummins, Senator, 305, 422
Curtis, Senator, 82, 179, 343, 350,

366
Cuthbert, Mrs. Lucius M., 78

Dabs, Mr., 330

Dale, Representative, 137

Daniels, L. G. C, 377

Daniels, Lou C, 245, 251, 409,

448
Daniels, Lucy, 404

INDEX

479

Daniels, Secretary, 441

Davis, Edith, 453

Davis, Mrs. Frances, 377

Day, Dorothy, 251, 272

Dean, Ella Morton, 230, 231

Debs, Eugene, 153

Decker, Eva, 251

Democratic Women's Deputation,

63
Dennett, Mary Ware, 13, 38
De Shan, Florence, 412
De Valera, President, 444
Devoe, Emma Smith, 39, 66
De Young, M. H., 106
Dial, Senator, 415
Dixon, Edna, 236
Dixon, Mary Bartlett, 251
Dock, Lavinia, quoted 212; 220,

221, 236, 313, 357
Doolittle, Kepresentative, 89
Dorr, Rheta Childe, 46, 60, 158
Dorsey, Hugh M., 423
Doty, Madeline, 300
Dowell, Mary Carol, 397
Doyle, Christine M., 357
Drew, Senator, 415
Drumheller, Eoscoe, 92
Dubrow, Mary E., 124, 328, 357,

381, 392, 393, 394, quoted 439-

43
Dyer, Mrs. E. TiflFany, 145
Dyer, Representative, 137

Eastman, Crystal, 13, 51, 66, 158

Edge, Senator, 415

Edwards, Edward I., 435

" E. H. Howe," 410

Emory, Julia, 124, 238, 251, 263,
273, 275, 328, 35?, 364, 375, 376,
377, 379, 393/ 394, 396, quoted
424-8; 470, 472, 473

Evans, Mrs., 19

Evans, Mrs. Edmund C, 357, 394

Evans, Ernestine, 300

Evans, Mrs. Evan, 155

Evans, Mrs. Glendower, quoted 59

Ewing, Lucy, 229, 236, 407

Eylward, Estella, 404

Pendall, Mary Gertrude, 124, 140,

218, 328, 355, 357, 373, 374, 377,

400, 465

Fess, Simeon, 433, quoted 440

Field, Sara Bard, quoted 101 ; 105,

107-8, quoted 108-14; 114, 115,

118, 153, 157, 164, 165, 174,

quoted 188; 190, 328, 451
Findeisen, Ella, 251
Fisher, Katherine Rolston, 242,

quoted 261 ; 269, 315, 357, 377
Fishstein, Rose, 404
Fishstein, Rose G., 404
Fitch, Ruth, quoted 183-4
Fitzgerald, Representative, 128
Flanagan, Catherine, 124, quoted

230-2; 233, 236, 249, 250, 328,

380, 382, 433, 443, 448, 453, ^55,

463, 474
Flegel, Mr., 92
Forbes, T. W., 404
Fotheringham, Janet, 225
Fotheringham, Margaret, 236 ;

quoted 237; 238
Fowler, Frances, 409
French Commission, 207
French, Mrs. L. Crozier, 452
Frierson, William L., quoted 451
Frost, Grace, 375
Frost, Susan, 389
Fuller, Clara Kinsley, 236, quoted

237

Gale, Zona, quoted 67; 186
Gallagher, Andrew, quoted 104
Gallinger, Senator, 345
Gannon, Dr., 280
Gard, Representative, 118, 137
Gardner, Commissioner, 279
Gardner, Gilson, 25, 203, quoted

204; 226, 227, quoted 234; 235,

267
Gardner, Mrs. Gilson, 20, 51, 69,

70, 94, quoted 95; 129, 134, 201,

225, quoted 265; 266, 318, 357,

377, 396, 466
Garnett, Louise, 380, 428
Garrison, Rebecca, 404
Gasch, Marie Manning, 251
Gates, Wellington H., 88
Gay, Senator, 411
Gerberding, Elizabeth, 155
Germany, war declared, 205
Gerry, Senator, 342
Gilbert, Mildred, 181
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, quoted

418-9
Ginsberg, Anna, 404
Glines, Mildred, 342
Glover, W. Irving, 436
Goode, Edith, 151

480

INDEX

Goode, Jane, 151

Gonzon, Mary, 346

Goolsby, Mr., 330

Gram, Alice, 47, 251

Gram, Betty, 124, 251, 328, 374,

380, 409, 422, 433, quoted 435-9;

441, 442, 443, 451, 453, 455, 460
Gray, Natalie, 233, 236, 466
Gray, Mrs. S. H. B., 220, 466
Greeley, Helen Hoy, 449
Green, Mrs. E. C, 452
Green, Mrs. Frances, 223
Green, Mollie Marie, 357
Greiner, Gladys, 220, 222, 242, 248,

357, 373, 374, 381, 404, 407
Grey, Sir Edward, 11
Grimes, Mrs., 318
Grogan, Sara, 22, 377, 379, 389
Gross, Mrs. Irving, 409
Guggenheim, Leo U., 88
Guilford, Ella, 251
Gwinter, Eleanor, 242

Hale, Matthew, 415

Hamilton, Elizabeth, 261

Hara, Ernestine, 243

Harding, Warren G., 345, 422, 449,

454
Hardwick, Senator, 350, 415
Hardy, Jennie C. Law, 117
Harmer, Senator, 440
Harper, Ida Husted, 43
Harrington, Governor, 424
Harris, Gabrielle, 403
Harris, Senator, 415
Harrison, Senator, 415
Hasbrouck, Olive, 66
Havemeyer, Mrs. H. O., 174, 402,

quoted 403; 404, 407, 448, 452,

453
Hawkins, Mrs. W. J., 431
Hawley, ex-Governor, 84
Hawley, Senator, 92
Hayden, Congressman, 83, 90
fiays. Will H., 444, quoted 445
Hearst, Phoebe A., 157
HeflFelfinger, Kate Cleaver, 245,

247, 249, 357, 396
Henderson, Jessica, 409
Henderson, Wilma, 409-10
Henesy, Minnie, 245, 247, 249
Henkel, Alice, 124, 343
Hennessy, Charles O'Connor, 381-2
Henry, Mr., quoted 68; 69, quoted

94-5; 127

Hepburn, Mrs. Thomas, 290

Herendeen, Anne, quoted 7

Herkner, Anne, 404

Herndon, Mrs., 271

Hershfleld, Harry, 436

Higgins, Colonel, 373

Hill, Alberta, 63

Hill, Elsie, 34, 51, 124, 129, 133,

175, 176, 205, 290, 328, 357, 358,

quoted 361, 380, 409, 413, 443,

445, 446
Hilles, Florence Bayard, 117, 151,

181, 201, 225, quoted 345; 346,

381, 390, 443, 449, 453
Hinchey, Margaret, quoted 58
Hinshaw, Virgil, 300
Holcomb, Governor Marcus, 463
Hollis, Senator, 306
Hooker, Mrs. Donald R., 51, 129,

201, 301, 426, 450
Hooper, ex-Governor, 454
Hopkins, J. A. H., 226, 227, 267,

300, quoted 301
Hopkins, Mrs. J. A. H., 201, 225,

227, 433, 435, 438
Hornesby, L. H., 251
Hourwich, Kebecca, 124, 296,

381
House Suffrage Committee, 302,

306, 307
Howe, Julia Ward, 103
Howell, Representative, 109
Howry, Elizabeth, 186
Huddleston, Mr., 320
Huff, Elizabeth, 396
Huff, Emily, 400
Hughes, Charles Evans, 27, 28,

161, 162
Hull, Mr., 337
Hunkins, Hazel, 124, 177, 209, 220,

222, 225, 328, 355, 356, 357, 358,

470
Hunt, Helen, 332
Hunter, Gertrude, 77, quoted 80;

236
Hurlburt, Julia, 151, 225
Hutton, May Arkwright, 154
Hyattsville, Mayor of, 38

Idaho ratifies, 439

Igoe, Representative, 137

Illinois ratifies, 420

Indiana ratifies, 431

Indianapolis News, quoted 112

Industrial Workers deputation, 57

INDEX

481

Ingham, Mary H., quoted 388, 401,

402, 404, 407, 421, 447, 450
Iowa ratifies, 422

Jack, Mrs. C. C, 409
Jackson, Mrs. Mark, 242
Jacobson, Pauline, quoted 245
Jakobi, Paula, 251, 273, 275,

quoted 278, 281
James, Ada, 420
James, D. G., 420
' James, Senator, 349
Jameson, John B., 381-2
l Jamison, Maud, 220-1, 238, 245,
. 247, 249, 373, 374, 377, 379,
396
Jerrold, Lilian, 346
Johns, Peggy Baird, 243, 251
Johnson, Senator, 305, 306
Johnson, Willie Grace, 404
Joliffe, Frances, 105, 107-8, 113,

114, 115, 118
Jones, Margaret Graham, 47
Jones, Senator Andreus Aristides,

305, 345, 347, 349, 366, 411
Jones, Senator Wesley L., 40, 305,

360, 411
Jost, Mayor, 109
Judiciary Committee, 35
Juengling, Amy, 251, 404

Kahle, Louise Lewis, 245

Kalb, Benigna Green, 445i^

Kalb, Elizabeth, 46, 372, 374, 375,

377, 379, 396, quoted 464
Kansas ratifies, 421
Katzenstein, Caroline, 151, 381
Keating, Senator, 92
Keehn, Harriet, 357
Kellam, Mrs. Arthur, quoted 345
Keller, Helen, 158
, Kelley, Augusta M., 377
Kelley, Florence, quoted 101-2, 113
Kellogg, Ehoda, 397
Kellogg, Senator, 345
Kelly, Mrs. Nicholas, 379
Kelly, Representative, 71
Kendall, Ada Davenport, 270,

287-9
Kendall, Anna Norris, 204
Kendall, Mrs. Frederick Willard,

242
Kendrick, Senator, 441
Kennedy, Marie Ernst, 404
Kent, Representative, 128

Kent, Mrs. William, 18, 51, 94,
100, 129, 134, quoted 144, 174,
186, 195, 201, 219, 251, 253. 290,
301, 312, 318, 429, 451

Kentucky ratifies, 431

Kessler, Margaret Wood, 243

Keyes, Senator, 415

Kilby, Thomas E., 422

Kimball, Alice, 357

Kin, Dr. Yami, quoted 105

Kincaid, Mrs. B. R., 225

Kindberg, Maria, 107

Kindatedt, Ingeborg, 107

King, Dr. Cora Smith, 34, 90

King, Senator, 343

Koeing, Ruby E., 357

Kruger, Hattie, 251

Kuhn, Anna, 357

Kuli Khan, Mme. Ali, 105

Ladd, Dr., 281

Lamont, Mrs. George W., 167

Lancaster, Elsie, 77, 89

Lang, Mrs. Albion, 449

Latimer, Edna S., 77

Latimer, Mrs., quoted 81-2

Laughlin, Gail, quoted 103; 163,
174

Lawrence, David, 254

Lederman, Minna, 377

Llennox, Ida, 346

Lenroot, Senator, 347

Lewis, Mrs. Lawrence, 13, 51, 66,
129, 201, 220, 223, 251, 279,
quoted 280; 292, 312, 313, 3S6,
357, 379, 381, 391, 394, 421, 430,
443, 451

Lewis, Rose, 409

Lewis, Shippen, 447

Lewis, William Draper, 447

Lieberson, Rose, 357

Lincoln, Kathryn, 251

Lloyd, Lola Maverick, 377

Lockrey, Dr. Sarah Hunt, 357

Lockwood, Mrs. Henry L., 236

Lodge, Senator, 422

Logan, Mrs. Ellis, 60

Logue, Mary, 394

Lloyd George, 10

Lowenburg, Mrs. Harry, 181

Lowry, Catherine, 209

Ludlow, Dr. Clara B., 70

McCarl, Mr., 431
McCormick, Mrs. Medill, 122

482

INDEX

McCormick, Vance, quoted 180
McCoy, Representative, 40, 41
McCue, Anne, 77
McCiunber, Senator, 342
McDuffie, Mrs. S. B., 71
McKellar, Senator, 350
McKenzie, Marie, 346
McPherson, Blanche A., 355, 357
McShane, Elizabeth, 251, 253, 375,

402, 404, 407
Mackay, Senator, 436
Mackaye, Mrs. Benton, 203
Mackaye, Jessie Hardy, quoted

365
Maqkrille, Ida Finney, 174, 451
Magee, Katherine, 397
Main, Effle Boutwell, 357
Main, Emily Burke, 357
Maine ratifies, 430
Maki, Mayi, 102
Mallon, Winifred, 15, 23, 151
Malone, Dudley Field, 201, 239-42,

254, 259, 267, 282, 287, 290, 300
Malone, Maude, 238
Mann, Representative, 93, 339
Maphis, Director, 334
Marion, Kitty, 222, 223, 225
Marlborough, Duchess of, 73
Maroney, Lieut., 154
Marsden, Edith, 46
Marsh, Eleanor Taylor, 47
Martin, Anne, 15, 23, 94, 108, 115,

129, 131, quoted 134-6; 149, 157,

186, 201, 225, quoted 259; 292,

293, 299, 301, 303, 318, 319, 465
Martin, Senator, 334, 348
Martinette, Catherine, 251
Massachusetts ratifies, 422
Maverick, Lucy, 412, 413
Mead, Mrs. Cyrus, 151
Mellett, Mrs. Lowell, 134
Men's League for Woman Suffrage,

45
Mercer, Nell, 402, 404
Meredith, Mrs. Sophie, 249, 357
Merritt, H. P., 423
Michigan ratifies, 420
Milholland, Inez, see Boissevain
Milholland, Vida, 202, 222, 249,

387, 407
Miller, Alice Duer, 130, 131
Millett, Mrs. Lowell, 318
Minnesota ratifies, 428
Missouri ratifies, 422
Mitchell, Mayor, 114

Moller, Bertha, 372, 373, 374, 375,

381, 397
Mondell, Representative, 35, 67,

69, 114, 116, 128, 432, 433
Monroe, Lila Day/ 148
Montana ratifies, 423
Montessori, Mme. Marie, quoted

105
Montgomery, Senator, 442
Moore, Martha W., 357, 397
Moran, Mrs. F. B., quoted 166
Morey, Agnes H., 151, 251, 381,

quoted 388-9, 409, 422, 152, 208,

209, 210, 220-1, 231, 250, 278,

381, 408, 410
Morgan, Mary, 185
Morgan, Representative, 137
Morris, Mildred, 396, 404, 472
Morrison, Secretary, 430
Moses, George H., 381
Moss, Mr. Hunter, 121, 137, 138
Moulton, Arthur L., 79
Moyle, James H., 92
MuUowney, Judge, 226, 243, 248,

249, 252
Munds, Mrs. Frances, 90
Munnecke, Phoebe, 394, 400, 404
Murdock, Senator, 82
Murphy, Gertrude, 397

National American Woman Suf-
frage Association, 3, 13, 42, 43,
66, 168

National Association Opposed to
Woman Suffrage, 255-6

National Council of Women Vot-
ers, 34, 39

National Federation of Women's
Clubs, 59

Nebraska ratifies, 423

Needham, Grace, 374, 381

Neely, Representative, Kansas, 82,
92

Neely, Representative, W. Va., 137

Nelson, Representative, 132, 133,
137

Newell, Gertrude B., 152

New Freedom, quoted 198

New Hampshire ratifies, 428, 435

New Jersey Women's Deputation,
40-1

New Mexico ratifies, 439

New York ratifies, 421

Weto York Tribune, quoted 114,
122

INDEX

483

Nevada ratifies, 433

Nolan, Mrs. Mary A., 251, 313,

272, quoted 400; 404, 407
Northeliffe, Lord, quoted 301
North Dakota ratifies, 430
Noyea, Ruth, 77
Nugent, James R., 435

Oakes, Margaret, 357, 390
O'Brien, Matthew, 238, 259, quoted

260; 279, 378
Oceoquan Workhouse, 263-78
Odell, Mrs. George, 318, 374
Ohio ratifies, 421
Oklahoma ratifies, 439
Older, Mrs. Fremont, quoted 105
Oregon ratifies, 431
Overman, Senator, 363
Owen, Senator, 441

Page, Mrs. Frank, 409

Page, Senator, 345
-Palmer, Attorney General, 441

PankhuTst, Mrs. 9

Panama Pacific Exposition, 100

Papandre, Elizabeth, 181

Patterson, Lulu, 346 ^

Paul, Alice, r€sum6 of achieve-
ments, 4-5; youth and training,
7-8; work in England, 8-9;
meeting with Lucy Burns, 9;
Scottish campaign, 10-11; ex-
periences in Glasgow, 11; starts
work for Constitutional Amend-
ment in Washington, 12-13;
Convention of National Amer-
ican Association in Philadel-
phia, 13; Chairman Special
Committee of National Ameri-
can Woman Suffrage Associa-
tion, 13; description and trib-
utes, 14-16; starts work in
Washington, Dec, 1912, 18;
methods of working, 19-28; and
President Wilson, 32; leads Con-
gressional Committee Deputa-
tion, 33; deputation of New
Jersey women, 41; plans for

1914, 51; preparations for dem-
onstration May 2, 1914, 66;
Congressional Union deputation,
69; quoted, 74-77; outline for

1915, 99; Telegraph Editor of
San Francisco Bulletin, 106;
and Judiciary Committee, Dec,

1915, 116-22; Congressional
Union National Convention,
128; and William Elza Wil-
liams, 133; quoted 142; forma-
tion of Woman's Party, 149-51;
Hughes campaign, 161-2; White
House picketing, 196; National
Woman's Party oxganized, 199;
declaration of war with Ger-
many, 206; assaulted while
picketing, 232; arrested, 245;
quoted 246-7 ; in prison, 249 ; in-
terviewed in prison, 254; in
psychopathic ward, 268; in Oc-
eoquan, 284; hunger striking,
285; lobbying, 318; Susan B.
Anthony Amendment passes
House of Representatives, 340;
quoted 358; Lafayette Monu-
ment meetings, 360-3; arrested,
377, 379; and Senator Borah,
382-3; watchflres, 393; Presi-
dent Wilson's homecoming dem-
onstration, 408 ; Metropolitan
Opera House demonstration,
412-3; Utah ratification, 428;
Maine ratification, 430; Dela-
ware ratification, and Senator
Harding, 449; Cox and Harding
campaign, 453

Peck, Mildred, 346

Pendleton Tribune, quoted 91

Pennsylvania ratifies, 421

Penrose, Senator, 421

Pepper, George Wharton, 447

Perry, Emily, 318

Pflaster, Mrs., 312, 397

Phelan, Senator, 342, 429

Phelps, Edith, 390

Philippine Bill, 93

Picketing, details, 464-8

Pierce, Vivian, 46, 124; quoted
177; 220, 238, 244, 312, 328, 372,
373, 374-7, 375, 381, 429, 431,
443

Pinehot, Mrs. Amos, 145

Pincus, Jane, 77, quoted 83

Piunti, Adelina, 396

Poindexter, Senator, 434, quoted
441

Polk, Mrs. Stewart, 373

PoUitzer, Anita, 124, 328, quoted
329-34; 379, 380, 415, 429, 430,
431, 432, 433, 434, 440, 443, 445,
452, 453, 454, 455, 460

484

INDEX

Pollock, Senator, 330, 382, 404,

415
Pope, Mrs. Horton, 372
Pottier, Berry, 409
Poll, Mr., 69, 127, quoted 306
Price, Lucy, 341
Pride, Mrs. Marcella, 383
" Prison Special," 407
Puffenbarger, Mrs., 442
Pugh, Judge, 236, 237
Pullman, Major, 210, 234
Purtelle, Edna M., 357

Quay, Mrs. E. B., 251

Raker, Mr., 338

Bankin, Hon. Jeannette, 300, 318

Bead, Mrs. Percy, 152

Beading, Iiord, 346

Beans, Captain, 259

Beber, Mabel, 453

Bector, Mrs. James, 452, 453

Beed, Mrs. Percy, 389

Beed, Senator, 109, 321, 349

Beyneau, Mrs. Paul, 225

Bhode Island ratifies, 431

Bidley, Colonel, 357, 362, 385

Biegel, Ella, 152, 402, 404, 407

Bobb, Justice, quoted 259

Boberts, Governor, 450, 456, 457

Robertson, Mrs. C. T., 251

Bobinson, Senator Helen Bing, 42

Boewer, Mrs. George, 409

Sogers, Mrs. John, Jr., 152, 154,

181, 226, 290, quoted 301, 387;

402, 404, 407
Boosevelt, Theodore, 25, 155, 161,

216, 343
Boot, Elihu, 229
Boss, Margery, 20, 124, 394
Rossett, Margaret, 401
Bowe, Clara Louise, 124
Bumley, Dr. E. A., 300
BuBsell, Isaac, 428
Bussell, Mrs. Charles Edward, 134,

quoted 136
Bussian Commission, 208
Bussian, E. T., 401
Bussian, Mrs. H. D., quoted 401,

409
Bye, Governor, 351

Salt Lake City Republican Herald,

quoted 89
Samardin, Kina, 242

San FroMcisco Bulletin, quoted 106

Sargent, Senator, 36

Schuyler, Margaretta, 412

Scott, Melinda, quoted 57

Scott, Mrs. George, 251

Scott, Mrs. Townsend, 152, 181,

220, 389
Scott, Buth, 396
Seattle Times, quoted 88
Seldomridge, Representative; 92
Shafroth-Palmer Besolution, 54-6
Shafroth, Senator, 54, 382
Shaw, Anna Howard, 13, 37, 42,

44
Shaw, Lois Warren, 409
Sheinberg, Belle, 251
Sheppard, Senator, 343
Sherman, Senator, 411
Sherwood, General, 215
Shields, Lucile, 223, 400
Shields, Mrs. Alex, 396
Shields, Senator, 351, letters

quoted 352-3; 375
Shippen, Mrs. Eugene, 389
Shoemaker, Martha, 404
Short, Mrs. J. H., 251
Siddons, Judge, 378
Sisson, Mr., 320
Smailes, Mr., 333
Small, Ruth, 381, 409, 410
Smith, Elizabeth, 233, 252
Smith, Hoke, 317
Smith, Senator Ellison D., 330
Smith, Senator John M. C, 347
Smith, Senator Marcus A., 83, 90,

92, 347
Smoot, Senator, 428
Smyth, Chief Justice, 259
South Dakota ratifies, 431
Spargo, John, 300
Spencer, Dr. Caroline, 181, 244,

248, 390, 396
Spencer, Senator Seldon, 438
Sproul, Governor, 421
Stafford, Kate, 251
Steele, Bepresentative, 128, 137
Sterling, Senator, 430
Stevens, Counsel, quoted 259
Stevens, Doris, 77, 78, 106, 124,

145, 195-6, 201, 249, quoted 267,

278, 292, 293, 328, 343, 344, 380,

390, 413, 414, 448
Stevens, Governor, 429
Stimson, Secretary of War, 29
Stokes, Edward Caspar, 435

INDEX

485

Stone, liucy, 103

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 103

Stnbbs, Jessie Hardy, 66, 77.

quoted 78; 79
Sturgess, Georgiana, 231
Sturtevant, Eva E., 357
Stuyvesant, Elizabeth, 220, 223.

230, 231, 232, 233
Suffrage Amendment, 3, 34-6, 43.

161, 404.0, 417, 421
"Suffrage Special" Western tour,

152 X
Suffragist, established, 46; quoted

45, 49, 52, 60, 68, 94-5, 114, 134,

164-5, 167, 169, 178, 215, 237,

244
Sullivan, May, 357
Sutherland, . Mary, 390
Sutherland, Senator, 114, 116, 162,

344, 440
Sykes, Louise, 409

Taggart, Representative, 117, 119,

137
Tarbell, Ida M., quoted 158
Taylor, J. Will, 454
Tennessee ratifies, 456; Anti-Suf-
frage suit, 463
Terrace, Matilda, 357
Texas ratifies, 422
Thomas, Representative R. Y., 137
Thomas, Senator Charles S., 92
Thompson, Mayor, quoted 111
Thompson, Mrs. Sinclair, 124
Todd, Helen, 117, 152, 167, 174
Torrence, Olivia Dunbar, 251
Trammel!, Senator, 330
Trax, Lola C, 77, quoted 79
Trinkle, Senator, 334
Tumulty, Joseph, 145, 147, 346,

351, 416
Turner, Banks, 459-60
Turner, Mrs. H. L., 409

Ueland, Mrs. Andreas, 117
Underwood, Senator, 349
Unterman, Elsie, 400, 401
Utah ratifies, 429

Van Gasken, Dr. Frances G., 63
Van Orsdel, Justice, 259-60
Van Winkle, Mina, 167
Vardaman, Senator, 350, 415
Vaughan, Mrs. William P., 330
Vernon, Mabel, 8, 46, 66, quoted

85; 106, 111, 117, 124, 147, 157,
166, 181, 201, 210, 220-1, quoted
263; 292, 293, quoted 300; 303,
328, 407, 443, 447

Ver Vane, Elsie, 396

Volstead, Representative, 121, 137

Waddill, Judge Edmund, 254, 280,

282, 290
Wadsworth, Senator, 375, 411
Wainwright, Mrs. Richard, 300,

quoted 303; 363, 432
Walker, Amelia Himes, 225
Walker, Mrs. R., 407
Walker, Representative, 137
Walker, Seth, 455, 456, 459, 462
Wall, Henrietta Briggs, 389
Wallace, Alfred, quoted 157
Wallace, W. R., 89
Wallerstein, Bertha, 401, 404
Walling, Ada, 346
Walmsley, Elizabeth, 400
Walmsley, H. R., 377
Walsh, Prank P., quoted 104, 110,

444
Walsh, Senator, 113, 416, 441
Warren, Mary, 103
Warren, Mrs. Mortimer, 409
Washington Post, quoted 43, 181
Washington ratifies, 443
Watson, Madeline, 232, 236
Watson, Mrs. William Upton, 404
Weaver, Eva, 396
Weaver, Mrs. C, 396
Webb, Representative,! 117-8, 127,

130, 137, 301, quoted 302
Weed, Eleanor Hill, 357
Weed, Helena Hill. 15, 77, quoted
84-5, 156; 222, 223, 251, 357, 392,

404, quoted 406-7; 449
Weeks, Cora, 251, 404, 407
Weeks, Senator, 411
Welling, Congressman, 429
West Virginia ratifies, 439
Whaley, Representative, 137, 320
Whitcomb, Camilla, 251, 409
White, Mrs. John Jay, 37, 106
White, Sue, 46, 295, 296, 351, 389,

403, 404, 407, 445, 450, 452, 453,

456, 457
Whitehouse, Mrs. Robert Trent,

409, 430
Whitman, Governor, 113
Whittaker, Superintendent of Oc-

coquan, 227, 259, 264, 280

486

INDEX

Whittemore, Margaret, 77, 78, 124,
222, 382, 397

Whittemore, Mrs. Nelson, 152

Wiley, Dr. Harvey, 271

Wiley, Mrs. Harvey, 60, 251,
quoted 252; 253, 260, 386

Williams, Genevieve, 251

Williams, Senator, 118, 127, 128

Williams, William Ezra, 133-4,
quoted 135-7

Willis, Senator, 334

Wilson, Woodrow, 3; election cam-
paign, 28; inauguration, 29; at-
titude toward Woman Suflfrage,
31-2; reply to New Jersey depu-
tation, 41; reply to Industrial
Women's deputation, 58-9; reply
to Club Women's deputation,
60-2; reply to Democratic Wom-
en's deputation, 64-5; and the
Filipinos, 94; votes for Woman
Suffrage, 108; receives San
Francisco petition, 115-6; dele-
gation of New York women,
144-7; visits Kansas, 147-8; let-
ters, 162-3; addresses National
American Woman Suffrage Asso-
ciation, 169-71; letter to Na-
tional Woman's Party Confer-
ence, 172-4; receives resolutions
passed at Inez MilhoIIand Me-
morial, 188-9; acknowledges res-
olutions of National Woman's
Party, 205; declares for Federal
Amendment, 256; becomes ac-
tively interested in Woman
Suffrage, 302; receives Woman's
Committee of the Council of
National Defense, 345; reply to
French Union for Woman Suf-
frage, 348; correspondence with
Senators re Suffrage Amend-
ment, 351-4; delegation of
Southern and Western Demo-
cratic Women, 363 ; ' address to
Senate re Woman Suffrage, 367-
70; letter to Senator Hennessy,
381-2; message to Congress
Dec. 2, 1918, 384; sails for
France, 385; reply to delegation
of French Working Women,
398-9; burned in efBgy, 403; re-
turns from Europe, 408; Boston

demonstration, 408-10; leaves
for Europe, 412; cabled message
to Congress quoted, 416; ratifi-
cation in Alabama and Georgia,
422-4; requests Delaware ratifi-
cation, 444; requests Tennessee
ratification, 451

Wilson and Marshall League, 64

Winslow, Rose, quoted 58; 77, 174,
177, 245, quoted 247-9, 283

Winsor, Ellen, 357, 396

Winsor, Mary, 229, 238, 357,
quoted 359, 407, 453

Winston, Mrs. A. P., 393, 394

Winston, Mrs. K. G., 375

Winthrop, Hannah, 103

Wisconsin ratifies, 420

Wold, Clara P., 46, 355, 357, 373,
374, 375, 379, 380, 389, 404, 449

Wold, Cora, 357

Wolfe, Clara, 343

Woman's Committee of the Coun-
cil of National Defense, 345

Woman's National Democratic
League, 165

Woman's Party, 15, 28, 29, 172-4,
158-9, 199, 259, 311, 275, 380,
428, 452, 457-9, 467, 469

Woman Suffrage Committee, 35,
36, 43

Women's Trade Union League, 57

Woolley, Robert, 415

Wyoming Leader, quoted 87

Wyoming ratifies, 433

Wyoming State convention, 20-1

Young, Joy, 124, 223, 245, 297,
298

Young, Matilda, 245, 252, 375, 377,
379, 393, 395

Younger, Maud, 15, 21, 25, 28,
quoted 104; 124, 131, 144,
quoted 156; 174, 177, 184, 201,
quoted 255; 290, 292, 294-6, 298,
quoted 303-5; quoted 324; 351,
363, 381, 400, 469; Revelations
of a Woman Lobbyist quoted,
132, 138-42, 189-90, 319-24,
337-9, 341-5, 347-50, 366-71, 417

Yuma Examiner quoted, 91

Zinkham, Warden at Washington
Jail, 250, 258, 359

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